'MP quiz' student jailed over gun

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A student who interviewed MP Diane Abbott about "drugs gang culture" has been jailed after admitting possessing firearms and ammunition.

Marvin Davidson, 20, who is studying media at Bedfordshire University, was jailed for five years.

Southwark Crown Court heard Davidson was on his way home near Hackney station when he spotted a police metal detector set up and "panicked".

A starting pistol converted to fire live rounds was found in his bag.

Davidson, of Pembury Place, Hackney, east London, told officers: "A man gave me the bag on the train, I mean I found the bag on the train."

Matthew Butt, prosecuting, said the defendant's mobile phone was later found to contain photographs of him holding two other guns, one of them apparently fitted with a silencer, on 21 September last year.

'Drugs culture project'

Davidson told the court, through his barrister, the photographs had been taken in connection with a project about the "drugs gang culture and young black men".

Defence counsel Gillian Jones explained it was intended one of the images would be used in a "design for a poster, but it was deemed not appropriate".

She said the project also involved her client interviewing Ms Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.

The barrister added Davidson, who started his degree course last year, had been visited in his room by friends who left the gun there after he objected to them taking it to a dance.

The barrister said, despite growing up on a "tough estate" and having a previous conviction for possessing heroin, Davidson had managed to do well at school and go on to win an "outstanding achievement award" at college.

Passing sentence, Judge Peter Fingret told Davidson: "I am astounded that a young man of your intelligence and determination should descend to the level of having with you in a public place no less than a loaded firearm, in whatever circumstances that came about."