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Underworld gunmen shoot road signs for target practice!
Ever wonder who shoots up Britain’s road signs? Underworld gunmen use them as target practice to test their illegal weaponry?
As he drives across Britain, Ex-marine Matt Seiber photographs Hundreds of road signs riddled with bullet-holes, and He believes they’re being used as target-practice by would-be gunmen
Gun-crime in the UK may still be rare, but a drive around our roads reveals that it is far closer to home than you might have thought. In fact, hundreds of road signs are peppered with bullet-holes, rather than pellet holes, made by ammunition from illegal firearms. From a No Stopping sign near the A40 in Oxfordshire that has been shot seven times to the Hungerford road sign near where Michael Ryan shot 16 people dead, many of our road signs are riddled with sinister bullet-holes – a result of gunmen using them as target practice.
Sinister: This No Stopping sign near the A40 in Oxfordshire is riddled with what appear to be bullet-holes
This shot-at sign on the A614 in Humberside bears testament to the murky world of illegal firearms
Matt Seiber found this road sign near Hungerford, where Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree, killing 16 people
Former Marine Matt Seiber, 58, who has travelled the land in search of signs that have been shot at, says there is plenty of evidence of illegal firearms if you look for it.
He believes Britain’s road signs are being used by killers and other criminals to test their weaponry before they unleash it on a live target.
‘I find evidence of people modifying shotguns, similar to what Raoul Moat did by putting weight into shotgun pellets,’ he said.‘There are specific types of location that you find them in, and I get a gut feeling when I think I’m in the right spot.’
His astonishing pictures show bullet-holes in hundreds of signs across 36 counties, some of which the Falklands veteran believe may have been put there by Britain’s most notorious killers. Driving through Cumbria, close to where taxi driver Derrick Bird murdered 12 people in June 2010, Mr Seiber saw bullet-holes he believes were caused by Bird.This sign for an army barracks has a large hole in it and is located at a busy road junction in Oxfordshire
Mr Seiber says these holes were made by a high velocity rifle in the Oxfordshire countryside
‘I’ve found sights that I think could be linked to Derrick Bird; but it’s impossible to be sure,’ he said. He is also convinced about the road-sign outside Hungerford, the quiet Berkshire market-town where in 1987 Michael Ryan shot dead 16 people including his own mother before shooting himself dead. Before he embarked on his massacre, Ryan told an employer he liked to go out at night to shoot at things on the road-side.
Mr Seiber, who photographed the local road sign with bullet holes, drives throughout the country in his job as a corporate driver, and picks routes near scenes of notorious shootings. ‘I will purposefully travel on a route that I think may have bullet holes in,’ he said, adding that Oxfordshire and Cumbria had particularly high numbers of signs that had been shot at.This is the legacy of a round from a high velocity rifle that was fired from a field into a Warwickshire sign
Former Marine Matt Seiber believes the holes are caused by would-be criminals testing their illegal firearms
This sign outside the village of Cuddington in Buckingham has what looks like a bullet hole among the pelelts Mr Seiber’s interest in the subject began when he saw some men shooting at a road sign in Madrid years ago. ‘I was 300m from a small road when I saw three guys firing hand-guns at a road sign,’ he said. ‘One of them started shouting at me, then suddenly they were shooting and bullets were flying over my head.’ This narrow escape was followed by a stint in the Royal Marines, which familiarised him with guns, enabling Mr Seiber to identify what different models are being used on road signs. He said: ‘The majority of weapons used are rifles and shotguns, not handguns so much.’ Mr Seiber records his project on his website gunfire-graffiti, and has also written a book called Gunfire Graffiti: Overlooked Gun Crime in the UK.
A bit different from the above…
A staged roadside image of one of the 1930’s Bonnie and Clyde gang, probably WD Jones. He described how Clyde Barrow would practise marksmanship and anti-ambush by quickly pulling up in a car in remote rural areas and discharge his often favoured .30 BAR – Browning Automatic Rifle into trees and road signs.
To see more pictures like these or find out more about Gunfire Graffiti, visit: http://www.gunfire-graffiti.co.uk
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