Fight Crime! Buy a Gun.

US readers will be astonished that supplying guns has resulted in Robert Tyrer, 51, his brother Jamie, 36, and Kenneth Lloyd, 55, being jailed for a total of 37 years for selling guns.

The 3 men imported 274 non firing pistols from Germany, and in their small engineering workshop in a run-down part of Manchester converted them into "Saturday Night Specials", probably as dangerous to the user as the target.

Guns sold by the men were linked to two murders and two suicides and other crimes, Manchester Crown Court were told this week . Sentences were handed down which would make any one who thought of copying them think twice. The men pleaded guilty.

They also built single bullet-firing pen guns, described by Judge Martin Steiger QC as an “assassin’s weapon”.

A man, Michael Sammon (46) described as "the paymaster" is missing and wanted by the police.

Another man, an engineer , David McCulloch, 52, who provided the expertise needed to convert the guns, will be sentenced on November 27.

Thomas Ravenscroft who is gravely ill was sentenced to two years, suspended for two years in his absence.

Police have said that one of the guns was found under the bonnet of a Jaguar car owned by of Manchester's most notorious gangsters, Domenyk Noonan of Bacup Street, Moston, was jailed for nine-and-a-half years recently.

Other guns supplied by these men were used In Liverpool in April 2005, when Norman Blythin, 38, shot a friend (?) in the chest. The friend survived but Mr Blythin was later found dead in his car after apparently turning the weapon on himself.

Brian Walsh, 47, is believed to have used one of the guns when he shot his wife in the head outside a flat in Droylsden in July 2006 and then turned the weapon on himself.

Police believe another of the guns was used in a kidnap and torture incident in Liverpool.