12:15pm Friday 9th July 2004
By Local London Reporter
Hundreds of replica guns will be crushed by a ten-tonne steamroller today, in a protest against gun violence.
The event, organised by Amnesty International, Oxfam, and the International Action Network on Small Arms, will be attended by parents who have lost children to gun violence.
It is part of a series of worldwide events for Gun Destruction Day.
Amongst the parents at the gun-crushing event in Shoreditch will be Lucy Cope, from the group Mothers Against Guns, whose son was shot dead in in a Holborn nightclub.
Campaign groups want the Government to toughen up gun export laws and support an international treaty to regulate the arms trade.
It is claimed that the unregulated worldwide trade in guns makes it easier for them to brought into the UK for use by criminals.
Britain is said to be the second biggest arms supplier in the world and a survey last year found ten per cent of Britons own a gun.
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