THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 2, 1994 TAG: 9410010130
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY GREG GOLDFARB
CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Kids and guns just don't mix.
That was the message echoed again and again by two gun control advocates addressing the third annual meeting of Virginians Against Handgun Violence, Thursday night at the Central Library.
``This is a hot topic and we need to be concerned about it,'' Dr. Joseph Zanga told the audience of about 50 members and friends of the Norfolk-based, non-profit volunteer group. ``We're a little late to this, and we keep hiding behind the right of citizens to bear arms. But what we're talking about is a health problem. It's not a civil rights issue.''
Zanga, director of the Child and Adolescent Emergency Unit at the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and Robert ``Bob'' Walker, a detective sergeant with the Virginia Fraternal Order of Police, said there is no easy solution for cities battling the death and horrors of handgun violence.
But there is a special 15-step ``comprehensive agenda for violence prevention,'' conceived and advanced by the National Academy of Pediatrics, that Zanga presented to help make communities safer.
``We've got to do something to protect our children,'' Zanga told the participants, including some from Charlottesville, Richmond, Williamsburg and the Peninsula. Topping the violence prevention agenda is cracking down on crime through law enforcement, an action dovetailing with the recently passed national crime bill. Other major agenda items include stopping gun proliferation through national and state legislation, retaking the streets from drug dealers through community policing and neighborhood watches, and curbing the glamorization of violence in motion pictures and television.
Alice Mountjoy, a Norfolk resident and president of the volunteer group, said her group has concentrated on banning military-style assault weapons - an action addressed in the crime bill.
Ironically, for every 100,000 Virginians, there are about 115 gun dealers and only 16.7 doctors, Zanga said. ``What does that tell you about Virginia? That you can get a gun easier than you can get a doctor.''
In the last year, two minors have died in Virginia Beach from gun violence, Mountjoy said, which drives home the point that you don't have to live in Norfolk, Richmond or Washington to be touched by handgun violence.
Montjoy's group can be reached by calling 552-8596.
KEYWORDS: GUNS HANDGUNS GUN CONTROL by CNB