16 FEBRUARY 1962, Page 13

SIR, —In a letter which you were good enough to publish

some weeks ago I mentioned that I had broken up a pistol which the police had threatened to seize in exchange for an 'amnesty,' in order to prevent a sound weapon falling into less reliable hands when the Government put it on the market according to their practice hitherto. It would be interesting to know whether the four pistols or re- volvers stolen from a gunsmith's at Reading, ac- cording to a press report recently, belonged to this kind of government loot from respectable ex- servicemen, as I suspect. I was told not long ago by a knowledgeable youth in a roadside café that the black market price for a pistol had gone down to £25. When I asked why, he replied, rather elliptically, 'It's the amnesty, sec?'

MICHAEL V YVYAN