
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, March 19, 1991                   TAG: 9103190418
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

STREET TOLL/ SULLIVAN QUESTIONS THE KILLING

"DURING every 100 hours on our streets we lose three times more young men than were killed in 100 hours of ground war in the Persian Gulf. Where are the yellow ribbons of hope and remembrance?Where is the concerted, heartfelt commitment to supporting the children of this war?"

Good questions. Indeed, these are questions all Americans should be asking of our national leaders, and in particular of President Bush.

It is heartening that the questions were posed, in a speech last week at Virginia's predominantly black Hampton University, by none other than Bush's Secretary of Health and Human Services Louis Sullivan. Sullivan's remarks were stunning testimony to the need for handgun control, whether or not he intended them as such.

It is less heartening to note the president's failure to heed the message Sullivan and others are delivering.

Sullivan cited a new Health and Human Services study that shows more teen-age boys die from gunshots than from all natural causes combined. And a black male teen-ager is 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than a white male teen-ager.

"Do you realize that the leading killer of young black males is young black males? As a black man and a father of three, this reality shakes me to the core of my being," Sullivan said.

Is Roanoke shaken to the core of its being by the growing incidence of such violence here? Not apparently.

Recent reporting in this newspaper documents a two-year pattern of black-on-black crime in Roanoke. It's a frightening trend: murders of young black men by young black men, committed almost always with guns, involving almost always drugs or alcohol, and occuring almost always in a small wedge of the inner-city Northwest.

Handgun-control measures by themselves won't break the deadly cycle, and Sullivan made no brief for them. Black-on-black crime is more generally linked to the collapse of families, the scourge of drugs and the despair of hopelessness. Even so, the frightening statistics are unlikely to improve - and Bush cannot mount a serious crusade against violence - without more meaningful efforts made to keep guns from young people.

by CNB