The Suns stoops to a new low again.

[ThePretenders]

Price of UK life ... 20p a bullet

THOUSANDS of Sun readers have backed our campaign to bring back justice to the streets of Britain.

It was launched yesterday with an impassioned letter from ex-headmaster Stuart Newton demanding a crackdown on the feral youths terrorising our neighbourhoods.

Concerned readers put their names to our Manifesto For Justice, with five demands to stop the "downward spiral of Britain". We will deliver every one to PM Gordon Brown. You can still sign it at thesun.co.uk/justice.

Today we focus on the deadly gun menace plaguing inner cities as young gangsters use firearms to settle disputes, but all too often kill innocent bystanders.

Their victims include 11-year-old Rhys Jones, shot dead in Liverpool last year; Charlene Ellis, 18, and Letisha Shakespeare, 17, killed at a party in Birmingham in 2003; and Jessie James, 15, gunned down in Manchester's notorious Moss Side in 2006.

Here, The Sun's chief feature writer OLIVER HARVEY reports on a chilling investigation into Britain's gun culture.

DRUG dealer Duke shows off his gun in a stinking stairwell and brags: "Bullets for this are as cheap as 20p."

High on cocaine and cannabis, the teenage gangster talks casually about killing, Wild West-style shoot-outs and revenge attacks.

Just 19, Duke "earns" £50,000 a year dealing drugs such as crack and heroin. Despite being arrested on charges from affray to possessing a knife, he has yet to see the inside of a prison.

But he offers a terrifying insight into the feral teen culture causing so much misery up and down the country.

Face hidden behind a sinister smiling mask, Duke - not his real name - tells The Sun: "A gun shows you mean business.

"I'm a dealer and when you get too successful people want to take you out - and I don't mean for dinner. It's dog-eat-dog. If I go to Moss Side and run into another dealer, it's bang, bang - me or him."

Duke comes from the tough Longsight area in an area of south Manchester known as the Triangle of Death.

Waving around a handgun he uses "as protection," he tells how he became a dealer after leaving school at 15.

"Trust me, it's not glamorous," he says. "It can buy glitz and glamour and attract the girls. But what you have to do to get it - dealing, shooting - isn't."

Duke pulls down his trousers to reveal a bullet scar on his leg, and says he often wears a bullet-proof vest under his hoodie. He confesses: "Every day I'm looking over my shoulder. Most of the friends I grew up with are either dead or in prison."

The Sun met Duke through a series of middlemen. We do not know his real identity, or the address where we were taken for the night-time meeting.

Duke says guns are available "on every street corner". He paid £200 for his pistol, and also keeps a £2,000 Berretta 9mm.

He brags: "You can convert an airgun to fire bullets and buy a shotgun for £50.

"To make sure of killing someone you have to be around 4ft away. Any more than that and you can still hospitalise them. I've shot at people but never hit anyone. I've been chased and had bullets ricochet off the walls like the Wild West. Once I was at a party with my crew and it just went off, bullets flying everywhere.

"I took one in the leg and just lay down in my blood and waited for it all to stop. I was taken to hospital but the gun was a convert - that's why I kept my leg."

Duke reckons Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's plan to ban deactivated guns won't make any difference.

He says: "Most of the guns on the streets are converts from Amsterdam, Spain or Germany. Some come in boxes of flowers or are just sent in the mail."

Duke lives with his mum and gives her housekeeping money from his drug profits. His leisure time is spent "getting stoned on weed and playing on the computer".

He claims £160 a fortnight in incapacity benefit for "mental problems". He buys crack from a wholesale dealer for £1,000 per ounce, then sells it on for £4,000.

He even takes an order for a half ounce of heroin as we speak in the urine-soaked stairwell of a tower block.

Duke sells his drugs alone, but his "crew" will help him in disputes.

He boasts: "We're well organised. Once we had to get someone. We knew he was going to a club so we hired a people carrier, put silly hats on and pretended to be a stag do. When the guy came out of the club we surrounded him, then bundled him into the people carrier. No one suspected it was a gang thing at all."

Knife-wielding Venom, 18, is a drug dealer in nearby Gorton. Like Duke he was brought up by his single mum and left school at 15 with no qualifications. He says: "I saw my friends and family driving flash cars, on big money with all the girls around them. It was all through drugs. I thought, 'F*** it,' and left school.

"My uncles were in the business and said, 'Please don't follow in our footsteps'.

"They sell coke, crack, heroin, you name it. I started running errands for them, a little package dropped here or there. Now I'm making £2,000 a week. I give my mum £200 a week housekeeping - she knows what I do but not the extent of it."

Venom - who also disguised his identity - adds: "You need a weapon when you're dealing drugs or someone will take your cash or gear. I've used a blade to fight off other lads. But it's all guns now - machine guns, AK47s, the lot. I share a gun with a mate - we keep it buried unless we need it. It's a 9mm re-activated gun that I was given by a relative."

Campaigner Patsy McKie, 60 - who co-founded Mothers Against Violence after son Dorrie, 20, was shot dead in Manchester in 1999 - said: "I feel pain every time another youngster's murdered. My message to gangs is that if you own a gun you're going to end up dead or in prison."

The prospect doesn't seem to bother Duke. Puffing on a skunk joint, he says: "A dealer needs a gun - and how else would I make so much money?"

THREE youths aged 16, 18 and 19 were last night being quizzed by detectives over the murder of landscape gardening boss Tim Chilcott, 36, in Minehead, Somerset.

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I now that many Britons are aware of the ridiculousness and racism of the Sun but their reporting has stooped and an even lower level (even for tabloids) because their main 'serious' story is nothing more than a joke. If any gun enthusiasts can correct me on this, but the gun Duke has looks like an air pistol. The guy isn't even putting his finger on the trigger and the knife man with the reporter doesn't even look serious. If anyone believes this story (i.e. the average Sun reader), then they are retards. The Sun should be sued by the Press Complaints Commission for blatantly spreading bullshit lies. I will post the pictures soon.

[ThePretenders]

Sinister ... masked Duke shows off gun

[ThePretenders]

At 1/22/08 07:37 PM, ThePretenders wrote: Sinister ... masked Duke shows off gun

Knifeman ... Oliver with Venom. Sorry for the triple post.

[dySWN]

Kid's gonna blow his own hand off holding the gun like that.

Also tl;dr.

[Angry-Hatter]

BAHahahahaha!

That's friggin hillarious! Real UK original gangstahs. :D

(Is that a kitchen knife he's holding?)

[ThePretenders]

At 1/23/08 09:39 AM, Angry-Hatter wrote: BAHahahahaha!

That's friggin hillarious! Real UK original gangstahs. :D

(Is that a kitchen knife he's holding?)

Yeah. The whole picture looks like a joke and anyone with half a brain can tell that this is fake. It a shame that Britain's biggest sellling 'newspaper' resorts to this for tactics.

P.S. Can anyone with some knowledge with guns can tell me if the gun is an air pistol or not?

I can also call people "young", "ruthless", add that they "puff on spliffs" and use a lot of "quotation marks" to make myself more authentic by using lots of "slang".

As always, measures that The Sun call for are unethical, exaggerated, ageist, racist, and disrupt the concept of equality. I'm all for gun control, but let's remember what gets "young" people guns into the first place; ignorance of certain areas and complete division of responsibility from certain institutions. It's not that they are "mean and nasty".

[JudgeDredd]

'dat seller ov da crack, he neds ta lerns da maff.. £2000 pa weak iz knot ad ups ta £50,000 pa yeer.

..obsilly e iz get payd by SUn rag 4 make up kool stoory.

[Brick-top]

When I read the title I thought you meant this:

[Centurion-Ryan]

Oh well,I guess this will convince them to crack down on guns and drugs...

Oh wait, they can't. They've all but illegalised them already.