Safer With Guns? Look at the Facts

This was one of those columns that I didn’t plan to write. At least not this way.

Oh, I had planned to say something in the aftermath of the prom-night shooting death Saturday of Berlyn Cosman, the 17-year-old basketball star from La Crescenta killed in her sleep in a hotel near Disneyland.

But I was looking for some twist, something out of the ordinary. Something along the lines of how parents cope with horrible events like this. Or something about the wisdom of all-night parties after proms. In journalistic parlance, I was looking for an angle.

What I was really saying--without realizing it--was that the shooting of one teen-ager by another wasn’t unusual enough.

God, have we come to this?

Have we gotten to the point as a society where we can’t register any shock over one kid shooting another?

It’s bad enough that I’m numb to it; worse yet, so are the kids.

Once upon a time, kids brought things to school like trumpets and gym shorts; now, they’re packing rods. Junior and senior high school kids talk almost nonchalantly about friends who carry guns. Like, hey, what’s the big deal?

Just a quick check of stories in The Times library spits out headline after headline: Boy Shot by Brother; Youth Shot on the Beach; Death of 13-Year-Old by Pistol-Wielding Playmate; Boy, 5, Shoots Brother and Friend.

A recent report from the federal Department of Health and Human Services, as outlined in the Washington Post, showed that in 1984-88, the firearm death rate among teen-agers increased by more than 40%. That meant that for the first time the firearm death rate for both black and white male teen-agers exceeded the mortality rate from all natural causes, according to HHS Secretary Louis W. Sullivan.

Can you as a parent, can you as a member of society, live with that?

Of course, there’s usually a common denominator in all of this--a handgun. Sometimes it’s a rifle or shotgun, but usually it’s a handgun.

And still we go bonkers over handgun legislation. We’ll let teen-ager after teen-ager shoot each other and say nothing, but then go crazy when someone talks about banning handguns.

“If you bought a handgun and it killed anyone,” says Jeff Muchnick, of the Washington-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, “it was 43 times more likely to be you or someone you knew than an intruder.” He said that figure comes from a Seattle study.

Even without statistics, we all instinctively know that. We know that many more wives, husbands, playmates and siblings are killed with family guns than any burglars or robbers. And don’t tell me that’s because burglars and robbers are deterred by the fear of a homeowner owning a gun: Burglary and robbery still flourish as crimes.

And yet we hide behind the illusion that we’re safer with guns in the house.

In the meantime, kids come to see guns like another household appliance. “There’s definitely been an increase in the number of kids who carry guns,” Muchnick said. “In a sense, they’ve been desensitized. To you and I, carrying a gun would be something that we’d be concerned about, but to a lot of kids in a lot of different parts of this country, it’s normal. They see kids with guns all the time.”

Last year, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates cited an alarming increase in the number of children across the country killed or wounded by guns. The chief didn’t call for a ban, but he at least drew attention to the problem. He said the number of children killed by guns had increased 97% since 1984.

A final statistic: The National School Safety Center estimated that 400,000 boys carried guns to school in a recent year.

I know this is a fearful society. I know people are afraid of crime in their neighborhoods, and some feel more comfortable with guns in the house.

I guess it all boils down to what kind of society you want to live in.

But if you’re a parent, let me ask you this: Do you think you can keep your child away from every kid who might have a handgun? I don’t think you can because to do that wouldn’t involve parenting skills, it would involve handcuffing your child to a bedpost for the rest of his or her teen-age years.

The gun lobby says if guns are banned, only criminals will have guns.

Maybe that’s true, but in the overwhelming number of instances where bad guy meets good guy, that’s the way it is, anyway. Criminals usually have the guns; we don’t.

But even if the gun lobby’s argument is sound, it should offer a refrain to go with it that’s equally sound: If guns aren’t banned, all teen-agers can have guns.

She didn’t know it, of course, but Berlyn Cosman was playing a losing numbers game. Once that gun that killed her was bought, the odds were heavily in favor of it killing someone like her rather than a bad guy.

It’s a sad, sick waste of a girl’s future.

Think of her tonight and accept this final challenge: Ask your teen-ager at dinner tonight if he or she knows anyone his or her age who has a gun.

Better yet, wait until after you’ve eaten.