When I was living in England and going to London town every weekend, you never really worried about guns. The biggest concern was getting your travelcard nicked. The "guns" that youths carried were usually just re-bored air-pistols, which rarely even worked. The real people who carried guns were drug runners and proper organized crime. The times are changing though. You can blame the gun influx on the expansion of the EU eastward, but it'll leave it at that to avoid sounding too xenophobic.

Roll Deep Crew with some finance (£100k!!) from the Met Police's Trident initiative made a video for Badman, which is actually not too bad (a US producer worked on it). The blogs are kinda questioning the genuineness, and if Roll Deep was the best fit for this seeing as they babble on about guns every other verse.

where is the gun?
breezey hand me the gun
somebody life gonna be dun

Either way, change always comes organically, and I doubt Ken Livingstone even has a clue. He has enough problems with trying to pry congestion charge fees from the US embassy's pocketbook.

Last second update:

If you haven't picked up Ruff Squad's latest, "Guns And Roses Vol.2" then you're sleeping. It has heavily sampled versions of "War" (think Edwin Starr) and Cutting Crew's "(I just) Died in Your Arms".

download Roll Deep Crew - "Badman" [direct]
download Ruff Squad - "War" [zshare]