Neighbours had heard gunshots. Police were called to the LiverpoolA port city in northwest England, close to the border with Wales. house at 10pm on Monday. Three people inside, badly injured, were rushed to hospital. One, nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel, died yesterday morning.

The UK has introduced stricter and stricter gun laws since 1996, when a school shooting in DunblaneA small Scottish town near Stirling. The massacre at the Dunblane Primary School in 1996 remains the deadliest mass shooting in British history. ended with 16 dead. Today, bringing an illegal firearm into the country is punishable with life imprisonment.

These laws are largely credited with reducing UK gun crime to one of the lowest rates in the world. There are only around 0.23 firearm-related deaths per 100,000 people per year in the UK, compared with 2.83 in France and 12.21 in the USA.

Yet gun crime is on the rise again. And the victims in Liverpool are not the only ones to suffer the deadly consequences.

Knife crime is also rising everywhere in the country. Around 40% of all killings are now carried out with knives.

That is why some think our laws do not make much sense. They argue that we simply cannot ban everything that causes deaths.

Five people are killed in the UK every day by cars. Diseases caused by fatty¹ and salty² foods claim thousands of lives. Yet we do not ban cars or unhealthy foods.

No matter what we try to ban, they claim, people will find some other way of hurting themselves and others.

But some think it is not really about laws at all. They say social issues are much more important.

Poverty, falling living standards and other forms of stress have all been shown to increase violent crime amongst young men, who vent their frustration and sense of grievance on the people around them.

As this suggests, gender roles also play an important role in violent crime. Young men are more likely to commit most violent crimes than any other group. Some believe this is because masculinity is closely associated in many cultures with competition and bravadoA tendency to take unnecessary risks to show off one's courage. It comes from the Spanish bravo, meaning bold., leading them to take risks and try to assert their dominance in ways that can result in violence.

Many violent crimes occur more frequently in economically unequal societies. It is believed that inequality is harmful for social trust, and causes feelings of inferiority in those at the bottom of the scale, both of which make it more likely that people will lash out against society.

Above all, violent crime always increases in societies where people experience a high level of alienationEmotional separation. It derives from a Latin word meaning foreign or strange.. When people in a community know and value each other, they are less likely to commit crimes, because they have a bond of trust and a sense of responsibility to one another.

However, if people do not feel that they are part of their community, then they may feel a sense of exclusion and bitterness. They will lack a support network that can help them solve any problems they have.

To end violence, some say, we must first knit back together the social fabricA phrase used to describe the strength and cohesion of a society. of our communities.

Yes: The UK's strict ban on guns has helped reduce gun crime to almost nothing. Whilst we cannot ban knives, we can restrict access to them with simple regulation. Our laws are working.

No: The rise in knife crime shows that if people are determined to hurt each other, they will find a way even if we ban more dangerous weapons. And the deadliest things of all, like cars, are still completely legal.

Or... Laws only go so far. When a society is falling apart at the seams, violent crime shoots up. If we want to prevent more tragedies, we need to end injustice and heal divisions.