Moss Side, Manchester: I am in the city once dubbed Gunchester with the prime minister after watching . Just down the road, as it happens, is the Tory leader, who's also come to talk about guns and kids. Ming Campbell's chosen the same subject for the day but a different city. He's in Bristol.
Still ringing in my ears is the warning of one of those at the summit - the Rev Nims Obunge - that "we might be raising urban child soldiers". The senior police officers there agreed that although gun crime had gone down in the past year, guns were being used by younger and younger people for more and more trivial causes.
What was striking too was that not one of those there - whether police or community leaders - used the summit to demand new laws. Assistant commissoner of the Met Steve House, who is in favour of the legal changes the government is proposing, said nevertheless that listening to the stories of the anti-gun campaigners in the room - who included a mother whose son died after a shooting - "makes you wonder whether new legislation will really have an effect"
The chief constable of Manchester, Mike Todd, told the summit that "we should treat this as a child protection issue" by giving support to those about to be sucked into gang and gun culture.
Funny, then, that the headline story of today is likely to be promises of new laws.
"We should not apologise... I can鈥檛 take responsibility... I don鈥檛 think we created this phenomenon."
Clearer than ever before we heard Tony Blair鈥檚 answer this morning (hear the interview here) to those who say that he and George Bush are to blame for what has been unleashed since the invasion of Iraq - both in that country and beyond it.
His case was simple. First, the only people to blame for terrorism are terrorists. Secondly, the ideology and the infrastructure of Islamic terrorism existed well before the invasion of Iraq and the election of President Bush. Thirdly, it is in this country鈥檚 interests to go after the threat and not to wait for it to come after us.
His critics usually highlight the missing weapons of mass destruction, the failure to get UN backing and the failure to plan properly for the post war situation. The arguments will roll on for years, decades even, to come.
Too little time, in my view, is spent on the philosophy which underpinned this war and which made it it unique. The philosophy - if that鈥檚 not too grand a word for it - is pre-emption; i.e. countries are justified in taking military action to head off a future threat because it鈥檚 too dangerous to wait for it to materialise.
The argument about whether that is right or wrong cannot and will not be left to the historians, or those arguing about the rights and wrongs of Tony Blair and his legacy. It will shape how our country reacts to future threats - not least, the one that may be posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, and may be posed soon.
