This really has not been the government's finest hour, and once more, the Police and Army Minister is the culprit. Once more, too, he defies public opinion and common decency and thwarts any attempt at persuading him to step down and return to his professional practice of defending murderers, drug-traffickers and the like. The word is that the prime minister wants to make him go, but can't. It is not he - the primus inter pares - who is in control of the situation. It is his Minister of the Interior. Except that the Minister of the Interior doesn't seem to be in control of anything except his own grip on power and the police force.

Never has there been such widespread consensus on the need for a cabinet minister to step down. Never, that is, since the 1980s, when resignation wasn't even a word that we knew how to spell. Calls for resignation generally divide the public passionately with arguments for and against, people saying wholeheartedly that he must go or that he must not go. But not in this case - a few apologists, among them the chairman for the Malta Council for Science and Technology (which says it all, really) have made a half-hearted attempt at saying that Manuel Mallia should not be made to carry the can for his chauffeur's behaviour. But even those who tend to be rationally-challenged at the best of times have been able to work this one out: of course Manuel Mallia is responsible for his chauffeur's behaviour. He picked him, and more pertinently, he armed him with a gun.

Despite his giant fibs to the contrary at his press conference on the matter, his predecessors in the role of Interior Minister were not driven around town by a man carrying a gun. They said as much to the newspaper which took the trouble to ask them. So if Manuel Mallia's chauffeur routinely carries a gun, it is at his boss's specific request. And he wouldn't have had much trouble sorting it out with the police, either, because he has made it quite clear that Police Commissioners are made and survive at his leisure and pleasure.

Manuel Mallia picked his driver, and he demanded that his driver be armed with a gun at all times. He did not have a gun-toting driver foisted on him by somebody else's orders - whose? - but this was clearly and obviously his choice. It could not be otherwise. The gunfight in Gzira last Wednesday night was the direct consequence of the Interior Minister's two choices in combination, and for that he must go.

Sitting at lunch outside in the sun yesterday, surrounded by people discussing their shopping and so on, I was interested to hear certain phrases break through the conversation, with the words "Manuel Mallia" and "karozza" and "sparatura" and most tellingly, "Ma nistghux nibqaw sejrin hekk." That seems to be just the general sentiment: that we can't carry on this way. It's just too much. In these last 20 months, the electorate and even the press have allowed the government and its individual members to get away with murder. They have been able to do pretty much as they please. With the previous government, even the most minor thing was a major scandal, but now that we have so many truly major scandals, they have become routine and people absorb them and carry on so as just to survive.

So what is different now? Why have the prime minister and his police and army minister discovered to their perplexity that they haven't been able to get away with this one, with a smirk and a cute remark, as they have been able to get away with everything else? And yes, they are truly perplexed. They really don't know how to handle the situation because it is a first for them. It is this which made the difference: guns and shooting. The minute you draw a gun, you've lost people. Shoot on the streets, and you are finished. No matter what excuse or justification you use, it's over. In older generations, it brings back terrible memories of years of tension that are seared into our subconscious. For younger generation accustomed to the benign peace of the long years in which they grew up, it is a major shock. It shatters the comfort of the only thing they have know so far: peace, and law and order. With those gun shots a few days ago, Paul Sheehan shattered the Labour myth, and while the rest of the government is left reeling, his boss just wonders what all the fuss is about. His long life as a criminal defence lawyer has given him a different perspective on these matters. He's less easily shocked than the rest of us are.