Home Secretary meets Rhys' parents

The private meeting with Stephen and Melanie Jones took place during a visit to Merseyside, where the 11-year-old was shot dead last August in a crime which remains unsolved.

The Conservatives said the planned crackdown on deactivated weapons would have only a tiny effect on gun crime.

There are an estimated 120,000 deactivated firearms in the UK but Tories highlighted latest Home Office figures which show such weapons were used in just 0.04% of reported gun crime.

Any new ban would target weapons deactivated before 1995, when new standards were introduced to make it harder to convert non-firing guns back into lethal weapons.

Ms Smith said: "I will shortly consult on a way forward to allow genuine curators to collect legitimate firearms while giving the police and other enforcement agencies the powers they need to get black market firearms off our streets.

"Before 1995 the standards for deactivating guns were less stringent than those which currently apply. The police tell me these pre-1995 weapons are turning up more and more in gun related crime and I want to address these concerns to effectively eliminate the threat from our streets."

Shadow home secretary David Davis said there were four recorded offences in England and Wales in 2005/06 in which a deactivated firearm was used, and a further four incidents involving reactivated weapons, out of a total of 21,521 recorded incidents.

"While we welcome any action, however overdue it may be, to tackle the scourge of gun crime the Government's own figures show that in 2005/06 there were only eight incidents where deactivated or reactivated weapons were used - just 0.04% of gun offences," he said.

"We need sustained action to tackle the other 99.96% of this serious problem, bearing in mind that gun violence has increased four-fold over the last 10 years."