Gangs in Birmingham

Gun No 6's story is set against a backdrop of escalating gang violence in the UK's second biggest city.

For at least a decade before the gun made its debut, the streets of Birmingham had been terrorised largely by two gangs: the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew.

The origins of these two gangs are unclear - but by most accounts, they originated in the mid-1990s.

Some say the crews were formed when people banded together to form vigilante groups, protecting their communities from targeted attacks by racists.

Other versions have it that the groups simply used to all be mates, before an argument over a bet on who won a game of Streetfighter on the PlayStation.

Either way, things between them became vicious. The groups split down the middle according to their postcodes and violently defended their territories.

Two gangs formed from this schism - the Burger Bar Boys, also known as "The Burgers", and the Johnson Crew, aka "The Johnnies".

Both were named after their regular meeting spots in Handsworth, north-west Birmingham, in the mid-1990s: The Burger Bar on Soho Road, now closed, and Johnson's cafe on Heathfield Road in nearby Lozells, which has also since closed down.

The city was quickly divided up into territories, according to who had the right to sell drugs where.

The Burgers were said to be wealthier and better organised, with a much deadlier collection of weapons. But the Johnnies, on the other hand, were larger - they had more members, and had allegiances with other splinter gangs in the area.

In 1995, the two gangs were already notorious among police in Birmingham for being involved in drug dealing, robberies and kidnappings, when shootings started happening outside the city's nightclubs and community centres.

Prompted by the unsolved murder of Corey Wayne Allen, 27, in 1999, West Midlands Police launched Operation Ventara to fight gang violence in Birmingham - in particular, the city's growing gun culture.

Ventara did little to quell the violence, however, and the shootings continued to escalate. Across England and Wales, gun crime had increased by 40% in the two years following the 1997 handgun ban.

Things came to a head in December 2002, when Burger Bar member Yohanne Martin was shot in the head while waiting at traffic lights in West Bromwich, a suburb north-west of Birmingham. Yohanne's brother Nathan, also a Burger Bar member, was convinced that the Johnnies were behind the killing.

On New Year's Eve, 2002, Nathan and other Burgers bought a red Ford Mondeo. Less than 48 hours later, they drove it up to a New Year's Day party at a hair salon in Aston and opened fire on partygoers with a Mac 10 machine gun - a gun first developed as a military weapon in the mid-'60s.

They were trying to hit a group of young men standing close by - one of whom was an alleged member of the Johnson Crew.