Residents attend a vigil sponsored by neighborhood group Save Our Streets on the Brooklyn sidewalk where a man was shot.
- Our gun debate continues to revolve around measures to prevent deranged people from using military-style weapons to massacre innocent people. This is a worthy goal. We should do all we can do, within the limits of our Constitution, to reduce the number and deadliness of these tragedies.
But I am increasingly
concerned that the debate will never evolve to include deeper sources of
gun violence in our country. After all, most people killed by guns in
the United States are not killed in school massacres by villains
carrying AR-15s.
They are killed one at a
time, and usually by handguns. All too often, they die in urban and
rural communities in economic distress. More people die in gun suicides than gun murders.
This is the real gun violence epidemic. And universal background checks
-- as important and necessary as that step is -- will not do much to
curb it.
I had hoped the national debate might expand to include a deeper
discussion of what is really happening with gun violence in America. So
far, it has not. The conversation did not change much, even after Hadiya
Pendleton, who marched with her Chicago classmates in President Obama's
second inaugural parade, was shot and killed in a park while talking with her friends. She was only 15 years old.
The truth is that her story is tragically common in America. And the
most disputed ideas out of Washington, like an assault weapons ban,
wouldn't do much to change that reality.
What can be done to really reduce the senseless slaughter in schools like Sandy Hook and on the streets in cities like Chicago?
Should we close the
loophole that allows people to buy guns without a basic background
check? Yes. Get illegal guns off the street? Yes. Ban assault weapons?
Of course.
These things should have
been done years ago. For the decades of inaction, we can thank the
National Rifle Association, a gun manufacturers' lobby that has divorced
itself from reality.
Should we put armed
guards in every school? Probably not. More weapons do not necessarily
make us safer. And the price for doing so might keep us from measures
that are smarter and statistically more effective, like better mental
health services and counseling for students on the edge. Proposals for
"armed schools" may help the NRA sell more guns, but they don't address
the underlying problems. They also risk leaving the rest of us in a
perpetual high-fear, low-trust society.
What could really turn
the tide? Much of the daily violence is linked to economic desperation
and despair. Areas of concentrated poverty continue to be linked to
violent crime. In Chicago, the most poverty-stricken neighborhoods have the highest homicide rate. Studies by the Brookings Institution, Johns Hopkins, and even the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco note the link between lack of opportunity and violence.
We should be focused on
connecting people, especially young men, to training and employment. As I
said recently on "Piers Morgan Tonight," nothing stops a bullet like a
job.
As author and journalist Alex Kotlowitz told CNN, in violent Chicago neighborhoods, "The American Dream is fiction."
Fixing that by making
sure every American has a chance to climb the ladder to opportunity is a
good place to start. Beyond that, many community programs are having
success at creating more peaceful streets.
For example: in South Los Angeles, the Community Coalition
has created a safer neighborhood by working with residents to shut down
a troublesome liquor store and connecting families to jobs resources.
The Harlem Children's Zone is a successful example of an Obama administration program, Promise Neighborhoods, that has received too little money and too little attention.
Baltimore's Safe Streets program
reduces gun violence by providing mediating services and resources for
youth to participate in community service programs and job training. A
University of Philadelphia study even found that greening vacant lots in cities helps reduce gun violence
.
These programs and the
crying need for jobs should be at the center of any discussion about
reducing the horrifying death toll in our nation. Every child dead is a
massacre, whether it happens in unspeakable numbers in a schoolhouse or
one by one on the streets of Chicago.
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