I DON'T know how safe you feel up in the North-East these days, but down here in London it's like living in the Wild West.

There were 4,192 firearms offences in London last year: that's 42 per cent of all such offences nationwide. Drive-by shootings seem to have become the latest craze. I preferred it when the craze was for winkle-picker shoes, hula hoops or doing the cha cha. Police figures say that over the last 12 months violent crime - including murder and serious wounding - has increased by nine per cent.

London is not alone. Last week a club doorman was shot dead in the street in one of the busiest student areas of Leeds. A car passenger was killed by a gunman who opened fire after a high-speed chase in the Midlands. On October 7, the mother of the Liverpool footballer Jon Otsemobor was shot and injured because, as she said, she "was in the wrong place at the wrong time". The point is that there should be no such "wrong" places or "wrong" times. There is a lot of baloney about human rights, but surely the most basic human right is to be able to go about your business without threat to your life?

Even that office of liberal sunshine where all is for the best in the best of all possible (left-wing) worlds, The Guardian, says: "Police fear they are losing control of gun-crazy Britain... Gun crime is spreading like a cancer... The drugs are here and the guns are here." The Guardian also reports a victim's description of the descent into armed lawlessness: "Without a gun, you're dead."

There is an attempt to dismiss the surge in gun crime as driven largely by the drugs problem, and some try to make light of it by describing the frequent killings as "black on black". That fact does not make the crime less serious. Murder is murder whatever the colour of the killer or his victim. And the death of a black man - even if he is involved in the despicable drugs trade - is no less a cause for regret than that of a white, middle-class, Middlesbrough freemason on his way home from chapel.

What are we to do about all these gunmen? The true cause of the surge in violence is that two generations have been brought up to believe in "free expression". We have free expression and you see the results in our streets. The useless reaction of the Government is always to "make a gesture" or "launch an initiative" in the hope of quelling our fears. This usually means doing something stupid and irrelevant.

The last time they did something stupid was back in the 1990s when, after children were shot dead by a psychopath at a school in Dunblane, the Government rushed through legislation to ban hand guns - really guns that were used for sports. At the time I attracted much flak for writing in this column that, when law-abiding people are banned from owning guns, the only people who will own guns will be the criminals. Or were we really supposed to believe that gangsters would cower in their hideouts in dread and say to one another: "Well lads, I guess the game's up. The Government has banned guns. We'd all better get round to the cop shop straight away and hand ours in"?

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.