A Blacktown family slammed the front door of their brick veneer Sunnyholt Road home in the face of armed assailants. Their night visitors fired through the door, hitting a 13-year-old girl in the back. Then the whip came down. Premier Barry O'Farrell went ballistic the morning after, attacking the code of silence he claimed surrounded the shooting: ''What sort of parents, whose daughter's been injured in an attack like this, will not co-operate with police?" He was soon forced to backtrack after it emerged the father was co-operating. But the Premier's frustration is perhaps understandable.

Since winning office 32 months ago, O'Farrell has presided over a drive-by shooting epidemic and a mounting public perception that bikie and gang violence is spiralling out of control. But in Sydney at least, the bikies' position as public enemy No.1 has been usurped by the middle eastern crime gang, Brothers 4 Life. The O'Farrell government's failure to get on top of the gangs is made more galling by the fact that the Premier is also the Minister for Western Sydney, the Liberals' brave new attempt to keep faith with John Howard's battlers. The failure is underscored by O'Farrell's revelation on Tuesday, hours after the teenage girl became collateral damage, that he meets weekly with Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione to discuss shootings. Two days later, the NSW Police came good, big time. In dawn raids in the city's south-west and the Illawarra on Thursday they arrested 10 B4L members. Six were charged over two shootings, one of which was fatal, at Yagoona and Greenacre in October last year. Another four were charged over a Bankstown shooting where three men were wounded.

B4L was founded by Goulburn Supermax inmate Bassam Hamzy, who is serving a 22-year sentence for murder. Meanwhile, his cousin, Mohammed Hamzy, 28, known as ''Little Crazy'', has been the gang's de facto leader and is allegedly the catalyst for much of the bloodshed. ''Little Crazy'' was refused bail on three charges including murder and shooting with intent to murder. The internal war became public in October last year, when gang member Alex Ali was shot in the leg in an attack at Yagoona. Days later, Yehya Amoud, 27, was killed and his friend Bassam Hijazi was injured when up to a dozen bullets were fired into the silver Mercedes with the number plate BFL they were sitting in at Greenacre. The alleged execution was carried out in the early afternoon of a balmy Sunday in a residential area. Neighbours saw Amoud get out of the car and run only to be shot down and die. What prompted the rift and subsequent shootings remains a mystery. ''It's difficult to classify it as one type of conflict,'' Deputy Commissioner Nick Kaldas says. ''Whether it's a power struggle or people simply being offended about something that's been said, and acting in a quite irrational way by shooting someone instead of arguing.'' Police think it could have been sparked by something as minor as a derogatory comment made by one member about another's partner. There are suggestions some gang members were not sharing profits from criminal deals. Maybe they just dislike one another or the B4L turf war prompted other gangs to use the turmoil to settle their own scores.

Whatever its cause, the mayhem prompted the formation of Operation Talon in August - and it had immediate effect: drive-by shootings across Sydney more than halved. Police arrested and charged 196 people with gun-related crime, including murder, assault with a firearm and armed robbery. Thousands were stopped and searched by high visibility patrols targeting specific people who police believed may have been on their way to carry out - or become the victim of - a shooting. But nearly a fortnight ago, shots rang out again in south-western Sydney. Mahmoud Hamzy, 25, a cousin of Bassam and Mohammed Hamzy and a B4L member, was shot dead in the garage of a Revesby home while another gang member, Omar Ajaj, 24, was seriously injured. Police believe Mohammed Hamzy was the intended target but he fled before the gunmen could find him, leaving them to shoot his cousin. And in a clear indication just how much B4L is racked by division, a police source says detectives are looking at the possibility Bassam Hamzy had some influence over the shooting.

In mad dog terms, there has never been anything like B4L. They are a divided family within a divided gang that, unlike say outlaw motorcycle gangs, has no real structure or rules. Thus the killing of Mahmoud Hamzy was followed by at least three other shootings involving B4L faithful this week, including the shooting of another member, Michael Odisho, at Winston Hills last Sunday and the 13-year-old girl hit in the back by shotgun pellets in an attack police believe was intended for her gang member brother. Kaldas is hopeful Mohammed Hamzy's arrest will stem the recent outbreak of gun violence and be the beginning of the end for the B4L. There is a precedent: Notorious, a gang that started in 2007, fell apart in March last year after senior members were arrested. ''We have taken significant steps to dismantle the group by arresting the numbers that we have,'' Kaldas says. ''We need to send a message today that, if you're involved with this group, if you continue committing the criminal acts that you've been committing, you can expect no respite and no let-up from police. We're focused and we're coming.'' O'Farrell was happy to announce that, since Operation Talon started, the incidence of public place shootings into properties in Sydney had more than halved - but that is gilding the lily somewhat. There have been close to 300 drive-bys and shootings since he was elected in 2011.

Clearly, O'Farrell is not immune to an ague that has long gripped state political leaders. Amid a blitz of defeats and corruption allegations, state Labor oppositions are cowed and conservative governments are focused on a different enemy: cue the obsession with law and order. Queensland's Campbell Newman found his moment on September 27 when a brawl erupted among bikies on the Gold Coast restaurant strip and members of Bandidos Motorcycle Club marched on the police lock-up at Southport and demanded arrested mates be freed. Newman's government introduced a suite of anti-bikie laws the like of which had not been seen since the golden days of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Civil libertarians and the judiciary are outraged and community wants are suddenly worth more than legal requirements. Newman refuses to resile, saying he is ''reflecting what the people of Queensland are saying and thinking''. Then Victorian Premier Denis Napthine enthusiastically saddled up, embedding Tax Office and Australian Federal Police investigators with Victoria Police organised crime specialists. ''We do not accept, and we will not have, outlaw motorcycle gangs involved in drugs and extortions and illegal activities in our great state of Victoria,'' Napthine said after detectives handed over an anti-fortification notice to local Hells Angels last month. NSW had previously attempted to rein in motorcycle clubs with its Criminal Organisations Control Act but it was ruled invalid by the High Court in 2011. Now O'Farrell is riding hard, pricked by community fears and media baying for mandatory minimum sentencing for gun crime. Unless NSW acts, some claim, bikers fleeing Newman's new laws will flood south. The Premier has started flirting with mandatory sentencing.

On Tuesday, he said he thought police already had sufficient powers to tackle gangs, but after media reports claimed he was considering new laws to ensure gang members caught with guns faced at least five years jail, O'Farrell became coy, refusing to discuss whether cabinet had discussed it. He said mandatory sentences had been introduced for other crimes. ''We've already breached that wall. We introduced mandatory life sentences for people convicted of murdering police,'' O'Farrell said on Thursday. ''We had two incidents on Monday night. We had the appalling discharge of a shotgun into a home injuring a 13-year-old girl and, in Riverwood, we had what was described as a road rage incident where someone got out of a car and brandished a gun. I believe that we need to ensure people understand what the penalties around the possession of guns are. I will continue to listen to police and other law enforcement agencies on the ground about what they need because I know that's what the community wants.'' Law and order auctions have characterised NSW state election campaigns since 1988. O'Farrell floated to victory with his Attorney-General-in-waiting, Greg Smith, pledging to end such an unseemly way of addressing justice issues. Now an internecine battle rages within Liberal ranks on the issue. Hardliners like Police Minister Mike Gallacher are pushing, but Smith, known to be against mandatory sentencing, is pushing back. The upper house crossbenches are hot for the legislation. Elsewhere, though, there are indications that mandatory sentencing is going out of vogue.

Right On Crime, a conservative Texas website, endorsed by Republicans Jeb Bush, Newt Gingrich, Grover Norquist and Edwin Meese, is strongly opposed to mandatory sentencing on the grounds that there is ''no positive effect on public safety for the accompanying increase in cost''. Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Greg Barns says mandatory minimum sentencing is being abandoned by Republicans and Democrats alike ''because it's filled jails to the point where it's become unaffordable'' while having no impact on recidivism rates. Barns says the reason governments such as NSW and Queensland are pursuing the laws is ''because tabloid media runs justice policy''. He says Australia is alone in heading down such a path. ''The United States is abandoning it in large measure, and in the UK, they've been more about smart justice rather than just locking people up. The same in Canada.'' Sydney has a long history of gang violence dating back to the razor gangs of the 1920s. Some may remember the 5T which terrorised Cabramatta two decades ago. Right now, B4L looks increasingly like disorganised crime, the gang that could not shoot straight. If, like their predecessors, B4L fade from the crime scene, police will be free to concentrate on the better organised crime of the outlaw motorcycle clubs.