Revealed: The deadly arsenal of gun fanatic jailed for 16 years who recreated Private Ryan in his loft

By Andy Dolan
Last updated at 4:02 PM on 8th April 2011

It is a fearsome array of  weapons including a Kalashnikov, Uzi sub-machine gun, shotguns and pistols.

But this astonishing arsenal was not seized from a gang of organised criminals, but the private collection of a fruit and veg trader.

David Evans had claimed he only bought replica weapons to use for ‘war games’ in his loft, where he kitted out mannequins with imitation guns to recreate scenes from war movies such as Saving Private Ryan.

But yesterday the self-confessed gun ‘fanatic’ was starting a 16-year jail term after being convicted of a total of 29 charges of possessing and transferring the weapons to two brothers  who are already behind bars.  

Evans’s haul, which at one point was stored in a cardboard box kept on top of an industrial-sized fridge at his business premises, included American and Israeli military-issue machine guns – some so state-of-the-art that they are issued only to special forces.

A ‘hitman-style’ pistol with a silencer attached was also discovered, along with more than 500 bullets.

Evans, 42, from Wordsley, near Stourbridge, West Midlands, also held an MP40 machine gun.

Officers who seized the cache of 16 deadly guns initially feared they may have been stored on behalf of a far-Right group such as the English Defence League. 

They said the guns could have caused mayhem had they fallen into the hands of terrorists or the region’s drugs gangs.

But investigations revealed Evans was a collector who bought many of the weapons on eBay and had no intention to use them for crime.

He told police: ‘I just love guns… I am a bloody fanatic with them.’

Judge Michael Challinor said the machine guns were known as ‘room sprayers, designed for one purpose – killing people’.

He told Evans: ‘You cynically and deliberately collected this cache of weapons, some of which were described as dangerous a weapon as one firearms expert had seen in his 37-year career.’

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