2dogs
June 19, 2003, 06:39 AM
http://www.wvgazette.com/section/Editorials/2003061712
Pistol peril
Gun-polluted America
FIVE Charleston men have been shot to death in the past four months. Cabbie Loyd Lanham was murdered in his taxi June 4. Teen-ager Antuan Patterson was killed outside the King Community Center in May. Jed Smith died of several gunshots during a quarrel at Sam’s Uptown Café April 16. Randy Burgess was gunned down outside the Kanawha City Kroger March 20. Marcus Brown was killed on a West Side porch March 14.
This toll is sickening — but it’s minor, compared to the daily slaughter in the gun-infested slums of America’s large cities. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert visited Los Angeles, where 653 people were murdered last year, mostly in the poverty-wracked South Central section.
“On one weekend in the middle of last month, 10 people were shot to death in Los Angeles and 15 others were wounded by gunfire,” Herbert wrote. “...It is estimated that over the past 20 years, some 10,000 young people have died in L.A.’s violence-ridden neighborhoods.”
One horrible example involved the police chief’s 20-year-old granddaughter. “She was a bystander who was shot in the chest and head when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant,” Herbert wrote.
Families in those sections are afraid to leave their homes or let their children outside, he said. Most rush to work in the morning, then rush home at night and bolt their doors. The president of the Los Angeles Council of Churches lamented: “The young people have more of a chance of dying here in South Central than in a military combat zone.”
This is what life is like when nearly everyone carries a pistol. Inner cities are swamps of drugs, poverty, teen gangs and other evils. When hundreds of jobless youths have guns hidden in their pockets, fearful people feel they must likewise carry pistols for self-defense. It’s a nightmare and a tragedy.
America’s politicians, terrified of the right-to-bear-arms lobby, won’t do anything to reduce the pistol danger. Even if they passed tougher gun-control laws, it might take a century for police to corral the millions of illegal pistols that pollute the streets.
Electronics firms are developing radar-like imaging devices that show guns concealed in pockets. When they’re perfected, police may be able to drive along streets, spotting concealed weapons among pedestrians, or to scan crowds at sports events and rock concerts.
If that day arrives, perhaps police can seize hundreds of thousands of illegal pistols. That may offer the only ray of hope in America’s pistol insanity.
Pistol peril
Gun-polluted America
FIVE Charleston men have been shot to death in the past four months. Cabbie Loyd Lanham was murdered in his taxi June 4. Teen-ager Antuan Patterson was killed outside the King Community Center in May. Jed Smith died of several gunshots during a quarrel at Sam’s Uptown Café April 16. Randy Burgess was gunned down outside the Kanawha City Kroger March 20. Marcus Brown was killed on a West Side porch March 14.
This toll is sickening — but it’s minor, compared to the daily slaughter in the gun-infested slums of America’s large cities. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert visited Los Angeles, where 653 people were murdered last year, mostly in the poverty-wracked South Central section.
“On one weekend in the middle of last month, 10 people were shot to death in Los Angeles and 15 others were wounded by gunfire,” Herbert wrote. “...It is estimated that over the past 20 years, some 10,000 young people have died in L.A.’s violence-ridden neighborhoods.”
One horrible example involved the police chief’s 20-year-old granddaughter. “She was a bystander who was shot in the chest and head when gunfire erupted in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant,” Herbert wrote.
Families in those sections are afraid to leave their homes or let their children outside, he said. Most rush to work in the morning, then rush home at night and bolt their doors. The president of the Los Angeles Council of Churches lamented: “The young people have more of a chance of dying here in South Central than in a military combat zone.”
This is what life is like when nearly everyone carries a pistol. Inner cities are swamps of drugs, poverty, teen gangs and other evils. When hundreds of jobless youths have guns hidden in their pockets, fearful people feel they must likewise carry pistols for self-defense. It’s a nightmare and a tragedy.
America’s politicians, terrified of the right-to-bear-arms lobby, won’t do anything to reduce the pistol danger. Even if they passed tougher gun-control laws, it might take a century for police to corral the millions of illegal pistols that pollute the streets.
Electronics firms are developing radar-like imaging devices that show guns concealed in pockets. When they’re perfected, police may be able to drive along streets, spotting concealed weapons among pedestrians, or to scan crowds at sports events and rock concerts.
If that day arrives, perhaps police can seize hundreds of thousands of illegal pistols. That may offer the only ray of hope in America’s pistol insanity.