Another day and another death from gun crime. Yesterday, there was news of a murder in London's Hackney. This followed a week of grim reports from south London. The death of 15-year-old Billy Cox in his own home was shocking, as horrifying as the murders just a few days before of Michael Dosunmu and James Andre Smartt-Ford.

 

Gun crime has been rising for more than 20 years, and if last year's figures show a reduction, they still remain the highest for a decade. Moreover, there has been a jump in the use of guns in public places. The recent good performance in London and Manchester shows what can be achieved by well-organised policing and the country will want to see the efforts redoubled after last week's events. But they do not address the underlying cause, nor the rise in gun use.

 

The reality is that among a section of the population, mainly young and often black, ownership of guns is growing and there is a greater readiness to use them in often trivial circumstances. Hard questions have to be asked and answered about what is happening on large council housing estates in our major cities, where so many of the gangs live and where gun crime is incubated.

 

There is no movement out of such estates - where, in some cases, more than three-quarters of tenants are dependent on welfare, because such cheap housing is impossible to find in the private sector - and no movement in. They have become economic and social sinks where peer groups of young men resort to gang violence as the source of respect otherwise unavailable. There is no prospect of upward social mobility.

 

The black community has acknowledged that being routinely discriminated against is not an adequate explanation for why its young men fall disproportionately into crime. There is a link between endemic patterns of family breakdown, poor fathering and the moral disorientation of some young men.

 

We should consider urgently Sir Ian Blair's call last week for criminals to face the mandatory five-year sentence for possession of a firearm from the age of 17 rather than 21 as at present.

 

I think you are being a bit over the top there suggesting blacks disproportionately fall into crime, all the violence I see in my city centres and in pubs and so on are committed by whites

 

In terms of the recent shootings if it is drug dealers killing other drug dealers then who gives a $h!t ? 1 less scummy drug dealer on the streets, I don't think the average person has anything to fear by gun crime, let drug dealers kill each other the best drug dealer is a dead drug dealer anyways