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The owners of illegal guns, zombie knives and knuckle-dusters have been paid more than £4million in a weapons-for-cash scheme.
Nearly 50,000 lethal items were bought by the Home Office, it was revealed in a Daily Mail freedom of information request.
Under the controversial arrangement, taxpayers’ cash is given to anyone who held a weapon due to be banned by new laws which came into effect last month.
All the items were already barred in public by the Criminal Justice Act 1988 but have now been outlawed in private.
Experts have questioned the amount paid for 48,447 weapons from last December to March as the money mostly went on guns they say are rarely used in crime
Experts have questioned the amount paid for 48,447 weapons from last December to March as the money mostly went on guns they say are rarely used in crime.
It is believed manufacturers and collectors snapped up most of the cash as there were just 840 claims, meaning the average owner got £4,851 for a haul of 576 weapons.
The largest sum of £2.78million went on buying 1,000 lever release rifles while £262,470 was paid for 133 manually activated release system (MARS) rifles – both rapid-fire weapons.
Another £781,766 was spent on 32,348 pieces of ancillary firearms equipment.
Firearms expert Philip Boyce said: ‘In my 35 years in forensics, I have never seen a lever release rifle used in crime. I have seen a few MARS rifles but not many. These guns are used for rabbit shooting mainly.
‘There were a lot of lever release rifles handed in. I would be very interested in who had all of these as it seems to me like a producer.
