Shot

STOCKWELL, in south London, is famous for two things: Portuguese restaurants and gun crime. Last year, at the Asian-run Stockwell Food and Wine store, a five-year-old girl, Thusa Kamaleswaran, was shot and paralysed in a botched attack by the Brixton-based GAS gang (which stands for Guns and Shanks, or knives) on the Stockwell-based ABM gang (All ‘Bout Money). The shooters were three young men, who arrived on bicycles and fled the same way, leaving security camera images which shocked the nation.

Mercifully, such tragedies are becoming rarer. The number of firearms offences recorded by police is at its lowest level this millennium. Last year 39 people died from gunshots, down from 96 a decade earlier. This is not just because of better medicine; the number of people entering hospital accident and emergency departments with gunshot wounds has also dropped, from 1,370 in 2003 to 972 last year.