Police fight war on gun crime - by giving young boy a machine gun

It is a pose with disturbing echoes of child soldiers in war-torn Third World countries.

A young boy holds a submachine gun across his chest, his fingers hovering over the trigger.

The youngster got his hands on the Heckler & Koch MP5 quite legitimately - the police handed it to him at a summer fete.

They say such a stunt helps to raise awareness among children about the dangers of weapons. And they intend to repeat it elsewhere.

But MPs and anti-violence campaigners yesterday condemned it as a 'foolish' initiative that will help only to glamorise guns.

The German-built 9mm weapon - which can fire at a rate of 800 rounds per minute - was on display at a community fair in Limehouse, East London, on Sunday.

In the UK the gun is used by the Specialist Firearm Command of the Metropolitan Police, known as CO19, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the SAS.

It was displayed by armed officers on a stall which also had a SWAT-style helmet, bullet-proof shield and body armour.

The officers also had pistols strapped to their legs, although the ammunition clips had been removed.

A crowd of interested children get the chance to hold the gun and try on a SWAT style helmet and body armour at the community fair in Limehouse, East London

Dozens of children were allowed to pick up the deactivated submachine gun and wield it as friends and family took photographs.

The event was held less than a mile from where 36-year-old carer Curtis Smith was gunned down outside a nightclub in Tower Hamlets last month.

He was shot three times by a weapon thought to be a submachine gun as he took a wheelchair-bound man for a night out on July 27.

Jim Fitzpatrick, Poplar and Canning Town Labour MP, said: 'Giving-young children real guns is inappropriate.

'It could be glamorising the weapons and creating familiarity which is plainly wrong.'

Respect MP George Galloway, who represents Bethnal Green and Bow, said: 'The foolish display at this festival can serve only to normalise firearms or make them appear attractive, even glamorous.

'We are tragically used to seeing images of primary school aged boys handling assault rifles in Liberia or Mogadishu, but in Limehouse?'

Lyn Costello, co-founder of charity Mothers Against Murder and Aggression, said: 'I'm shocked. The police are working so hard against gun crime and this is a serious error of judgment.'

Superintendant Andy Tarrant, from the Metropolitan Police's CO19 firearms unit, stressed that there had never been any risk to the public at the fete.

'None of the weapons was able to be fired,' he said. 'They are all completely deactivated.

'We wanted to convey to the kids that although this weapon is deactivated, if you point it at a police officer they wouldn't know that.

'This is an ongoing programme and the whole idea behind what we do is to divert people away from gun crime.

'We've done this kind of thing in other places and it's been very successful. We will continue doing it in future.'

A Met Police spokesman said it was 'completely wrong' to suggest the initiative glamorised guns.