CAN I have my gun back please? The problem is this. We live in a house called The Watch House, attached to my church in the City of London, and directly across the road from the Old Bailey. After the excitements of the Jill Dando murder trial - which, I am sure, was a gross miscarriage of justice - and the awful entertainment of the Lord Archer trial - I would like to get some sleep. No chance, because there is a platoon of seagulls around our church tower and they make more noise all night long than the disgusting and semi-human clubbers returning from their Saturday night debauch behind Smithfield market.

Nothing would delight me more than the chance to take a studied pot shot at these gulls; though to do so would no doubt end up with my appearing in court on some cruelty charge mounted by those monstrous sentimentalists in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. But we are not allowed our guns any longer. You remember there has been a ban on handguns since that psychopathic killer, Thomas Hamilton, slaughtered 16 pupils and their teacher in Dunblane in 1996.

Surprise, surprise! We read today the official statistics published by the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College, London: "Offences involving handguns totalled 2,648 in 1997, compared with 3,685 last year." In other words, since the ban on handguns, crimes in which guns were used have increased by 40 per cent. It was entirely to be expected. How do the authorities reason that, by banning guns, they will cut firearms offences? A ban on anything will be obeyed only by law-abiding citizens. The only people who will never obey a ban are criminals; and these are people who will shoot their neighbours. The banning of handguns was just another example of the hysterical, politically-correct dogmatism that has replaced common sense in this once fair realm of England. Not the least of the consequences of this irrational ban is that British Olympic shooting competitors are now obliged to go abroad to practise, since their guns are illegal in this country. Another, lesser, consequence is that my wife and I get no sleep because of the noise of the bloody seagulls.

Ah well, ban one thing and license another. The latest propaganda is for the legalisation of cannabis. Cannabis, as many eminent doctors have pointed out this week, is not harmless. There are more cancer-causing tars in cannabis than in ordinary cigarette tobacco. Cannabis is a causative agent in psychosis, personality disintegration and other mental disorders. It also renders its long-time users apathetic and indolent. Is the remedy for a population which at the last general election showed itself more reluctant to turn out and vote than any electorate since 1918 to give them stuff that will put them even more deeply asleep?

I am not a socialist commissar and I don't think it is the business of government to go around banning things. But I wonder when I see the uproar against ordinary cigs and the clamour for the licensing of cannabis: would the present government licence tobacco if it were currently banned? The argument seems to be that, since the smoking of the weed cannot be contained, then it ought to be permitted. Oh great! Following this acute reasoning, I look forward to the legalising of burglary because the police seem powerless to stop it.

To return for a minute to my little personal difficulties with the disgusting seagulls, I have heard that there is a sidesman at St Paul's Cathedral who owns a falcon and that this delightful bird will, for a consideration, get rid of pests. Expect my next column to be written from jail, following my likely prosecution at the hands of the fanatics in the RSPB.

Published: Tuesday, July 17, 2001