Three women have taken on the battle to ban dangerous ball bearing (BB) guns from their community.

The mothers joined with police and trading standards officers to seize the biggest cache of the weapons in Brighton from a market.

Although sale of the guns at the bank holiday markets at Brighton Racecourse is banned, some traders have been taking them on to the premises to sell from the back of vans or under tables.

But at Monday's market, a casual trader felt the wrath of market organisers, police, Brighton and Hove City Council trading standards officers and the women.

The trader was spotted with a huge array of the BB guns by market manager Andy Morris of Town and Country Markets.

Mr Morris informed the trader he was in breach of market rules and could not sell them. Mr Morris has been a vociferous campaigner against the guns and has signs erected at markets telling shoppers the weapons are not sold there.

The guns, made in China, include hand-guns and rifles. They claim they fire bullets a range of 35 metres. They were selling from £5 for a handgun to £15 for a rifle style weapon.

Police officers patrolling the market seized them under section 19 of the Firearms Act 1968, which was amended in January 2004 by the Antisocial Behaviour Act 2003, making it an offence to have imitation firearms in a public place.

Other counterfeit goods were seized and the trader, from London, is now under police investigation. He was banned from future markets. Three other stall holders are being investigated in connection with counterfeit goods.

The three women, Lyn Bennett, Maggie Smeeth and Chris El-Shabba live on the Whitehawk estate, Brighton, near the racecourse.

The estate has been blighted by young people buying and firing the guns. Last year Levi Pettitt, of Haybourne Road, Whitehawk, Brighton, suffered a serious eye injury from a BB gun pellet.

Levi's grandmother Lorraine Snow, who runs the Crew Club youth club on the Whitehawk estate, organised a BB gun amnesty last summer when young people were encouraged to swap them for water pistols.

Mrs Bennett said the women also got the market security staff to seize pellets being sold on toy stalls on Monday.

She said: "This was our seventh market we patrolled and we will be doing the eighth in August."

PC Deano Carlin, officer for Whitehawk, said: "I think we seized about 100 of them."

They will be destroyed.