Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 25, 1992 TAG: 9201270231
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: From staff reports
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
IT'S A DEADLY GAME THAT HAS NO WINNERS
MORE CHILDREN were killed by guns in 1991 in Western Virginia than in any previous year. Dozens more were wounded. The easy availability of guns has made some children into dangerous criminals, turned schools into prisons and left lawmakers with no answers.
The photo booth at Roanoke's Valley View Mall is usually crowded with teen-age sweethearts squeezing in beside one another and mugging for the camera.
Recently, though, the camera caught a youngster with a different companion.
A gun.
Guns have become part of the youth culture in the Roanoke Valley and Western Virginia - with increasingly deadly results.
Fourteen Western Virginia children under the age of 18 died from gunshots in 1991 - as many as were killed by guns in the three previous years combined.
Three were killed in accidents. Eight committed suicide. Three were victims of homicide.
Children are not just the victims of guns. Some are armed criminals, willing to shoot and kill.
In Roanoke, three children were charged with murder last year. Forty-five were charged with malicious woundings involving guns.
Law officials and educators across the region blame crack cocaine and other drugs for the growth of gun-related violence by children. They say weak laws make it easy for kids to get pistols, rifles and semiautomatics.
But many say the violence is encouraged by a society that teaches children from the time they are old enough to watch TV that guns are an easy solution to almost any problem.
For some kids, carrying a gun is a mark of pride.
"I've seen them in school before," Northside High School student J.J. Larsen says. "I don't know anybody that carries them for protection. It's usually a status symbol. So people think you're cool."
Roanoke police Lt. Doug Allen learned about the boy posing at the mall photo booth while working off-duty security at Valley View. He says guns are part of the changing world of children.
In the past, teen-agers fought with their fists. Now, Allen says, it's rare for police to answer a fight call involving kids in which weapons aren't used.
Whether in the streets or at home, the combination of kids and guns has taken a toll in the past year. For example:
In a Southwest Roanoke housing project, a 14-year-old nicknamed "Nippy" shot a 7-year-old in the hand and leg. Nippy said the little boy's mother owed him a $25 drug debt.
Two preschoolers were wounded in separate drive-by shootings in Roanoke. Police believe both shootings were committed by teen-agers.
> Anthony Kasey, 19, armed with a semiautomatic assault rifle, died in a shootout with other teen-agers, his body riddled with 18 bullets. Police charged two other teens with his death.
An Alleghany County teen-ager was playing with a gun at a party and accidentally shot his best friend to death. After he killed his friend, authorities said, the teen shot himself to death.
There's no way to tell how often kids carry guns on the streets or into the schools. But many Roanoke Valley middle and high school students interviewed recently say they had friends or knew someone who carried a gun.
Western Virginia educators say they've generally been successful in keeping guns out of schools. In Roanoke, school officials keep guns out with uniformed guards, locker searches and security fences. "It may look like a prison, but it has helped make school a safe place," says Mike Rayl, an in-school police officer.
Patrick Henry High School student Ben Johnson, 17, says school is the only place he can get away from guns. Outside school, it's hard for him to stay away from them.
As soon as Johnson gets off his school bus, he sees young cocaine dealers carrying pistols, knives and bats. They have guns sticking out of their pockets, or they wear them in shoulder holsters under their jackets. When the cops come, they push the gun down into their pockets or cover up the holsters. Then they move on down the street.
One 18-year-old Roanoker involved in the drug trade says it's easy to get guns. You go to certain places and contact certain people and they contact someone and you can get anything, he says.
How many of his friends own guns or take them to school?
"I can't count that high," he says.
Roanoke Valley juvenile court Judge Philip Trompeter says one reason for the increasing number of juveniles involved in gun-related crimes is society's "Clint Eastwood" approach to solving conflicts.
Somewhere along the way, he says, the right to bear arms has become a license to use them.
"It gets perverted. We're conditioning our kids to regard their guns as they would their right to express themselves under the First Amendment."
Trompeter can understand why poor kids get lured into drug dealing, where beepers and guns are tools of the trade. When someone grows up sleeping in a bathtub to escape flying bullets, it shouldn't come as a surprise when he starts shooting back.
"They don't see the world offering them any other hope, so they're willing to take more risks," Trompeter says.
The gun culture is not limited to children who grow up in poverty. The 1991 Roanoke Valley Poll found that nearly half the families in the valley have a gun in their homes - and nearly two-thirds of the gun-owning homes have two or more firearms.
Trompeter is shocked at the number of middle- and upper-class parents who think nothing of buying their 10-year-olds BB guns for Christmas.
"It's almost like that's their first rite of passage. I think it sort of warps the healthy development of kids."
Garland Snow of Franklin County blames reckless parents for the kids who get hurt or hurt others with guns.
He just invested a lot of money for a built-in gun safe at his home, to protect his two sons from the weapons he uses to target-shoot. It was a major purchase, he says. "But if it saves a life . . .."
He wants his 9-year-old, Buzz, to have guns and enjoy them. "But I want him to know it's a responsibility and a privilege at the same time."
Buzz nods his head vigorously when asked if he likes shooting. He adds that his dad teaches him to be careful.
But Buzz's dad fears gun rights will be hurt by people who are irresponsible with firearms. That makes him angry.
"I don't feel like I should be punished for someone else's carelessness. But if enough of it happens, I'm sure it's going to come."
Dr. David Oxley, a state medical examiner in Roanoke, has collected guns for 40 years. But he's sick of the carnage that comes through his morgue: Over the past five years, 36 children under 18 have died from gunshot wounds in Western Virginia - including 20 suicides, nine homicides and seven accidental shootings.
It's hard for Oxley to see 16- and 17-year-olds - athletes, good students, kids with promising futures - wheeled into his autopsy room on steel gurneys. "When I get them, they've got no future."
This story was written by staff writer Mike Hudson with reports from staff writers Ron Brown, Laurence Hammack, Neal Thompson, Douglas Pardue and Sandra Brown Kelly.