A FORMER Royal Marine turned campaigner has said that the “very serious issue” of roadside gun crime continued to fly under the radar as he documents cases in Bordon.

Road signs riddled with bullet holes is a sight one might expect to see in the southern states of America, not in the leafy suburbs of East Hampshire.

And yet, although gun crime in the UK is still relatively rare, evidence of perpetrators using road signs for target practice proves there are guns on our streets.

Ex-marine Andy Rigsby, writing under pseudonym Matt Seiber, has spent the past eight years of his life documenting what he describes as the “left-field subject” of “gunfire graffiti”.

He has collected countless photographs from up and down the country which not only prove the firearms are out there, but show they are often being used recklessly, with bullets fired from moving cars.

Whitehill and Bordon residents may have noticed a sign on Oakhanger Road damaged by gunfire.

But a more recent incident on the A325, which has seen pharmaceutical firm Fresenius Kabi’s sign damaged, has left Mr Rigsby concerned.

Although, he said, it is “often difficult to analyse” the calibre used, he suspected the sign, which he drives past regularly, was hit by .22LR (long rifle) ammunition.

“The Fresenius signs have been hit by air-weapon pellets before,” he added. “They leave small dents in light steel or alloy.”

A .22LR weapon fires rimfire cartridges, in other words bullets, not pellets like an air gun, and would be far more likely to kill. A gun of this calibre can be legally obtained in the UK with relevant licences.

Of the problem of gunfire graffiti being carried out from moving vehicles, Mr Rigsby said: “Police and security agencies are totally unaware. We are a nation with little gun savvy.”

This means, he added, that gun crime is “easy for perpetrators”. Shooting signs is a “good way of testing penetration and not getting caught”, with culprits usually staying “mobile”.

Mr Rigsby said gunfire graffiti was a more common phenomenon in the United States and other parts of the world.

“It is easy in the UK, nobody notices and perpetrators know that,” he said, adding that it was “violent”?with “gun killers recorded as doing it”. “Michael Ryan (in Hungerford in 1987) and Clyde Barrow (in the United States in the 1930s) are just two examples,” he said.

A Hampshire Constabulary spokesman said that, generally speaking, incidents like this, which would likely be recorded as criminal damage, are often quite difficult to follow up.

Mr Rigsby has written a book called Gunfire Graffiti: Overlooked Gun Crime in the UK.

A narrow escape many years ago triggered him to develop an interest in the topic. “I was a victim of a random shooting in Spain in 1975 and got away,” he said “So the subject is very close to me.”

* To report a crime, call the police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555111.