Three guns were found in a weapons bin placed in Westminster as part of a knife amnesty campaign.
The bin is operated by Words 4 Weapons, a charity which aims to tackle knife crime and has also netted over 400 knives and swords. London mayor Boris Johnson joined forces with the charity’s founder yesterday to empty the bin and reiterate his drive to work with communities over targeting gang violence and knife crime in the capital.
It may be a tabloid favourite on slow news days, but knife crime has been on Boris’s agenda for a while – back in 2008 he roped in Lily Allen after she used MySpace to plead with the UK’s citizens to ‘stop stabbing each other’ as well as criticizing the role of violent computer games in the rise in knife crime and introducing weapons scanners at stations. Highly publicized stop and search tactics have also been touted as a deterrent, though last year Dave Hill’s London Blog in the Guardian highlighted some doubt cast on the Met’s statistics over the impact of stop and search on knife crime.
Words 4 Weapons’ success with their amnesty has had a positive effect though: 15 more bins will be placed around London as a result which should help Boris meet his recycling targets too.
