If Killing Is Down, Are Guns Out? Are Dads In? : Gangs: This is temporary remission; like any fad, gang warfare will truly vanish when it no longer seems cool.

Although violence has hardly vanished from the streets of Los Angeles, the peace that broke out between some gangs in the aftermath of the April riots continues to flourish.

For weeks after the riots we were deluged with commentary about the “underlying causes” of gang warfare. If these commentaries were correct, it must mean that a set of miracles has come about: Guns must have vanished, gang members must have found fathers or been adopted into nurturing two-parent families, poverty and racism must have been eliminated, schools must have improved, family values must have suddenly become widely accepted, the welfare system must have been reformed, jobs must be everywhere, the drug trade must have ceased and the cops must have become angelic, hyper-effective, or both.

It is more likely, however, that some gang warfare is in at least temporary remission not because of such desirable social improvements but because gang members have simply figured out that killing each other is really rather stupid. The “underlying causes” may have caused distress, but none of them required that bands of boys and young men run around mindlessly blowing holes in each other.

Teen-age boys are probably the social group most susceptible to fads and fashions. Anxious to establish their virility and frequently in intense need of approval of others, they will often desperately latch onto whatever it takes to prove themselves with their peers.

Because it is a fad, like the hula hoop or the bustle, gang warfare cannot be stopped by identifying and solving its underlying causes. It will go away when it falls from fashion, when it no longer seems cool.

There is no easy way to influence this process, but horrified appeals stressing the viciousness, immorality and danger of gang warfare may effectively only glorify it in the eyes of the perpetrators. Instead, reformers might more profitably rely on the obvious observation that the behavior is childish, ridiculous and self-destructive.

By the same token, of course, gang warfare can easily cycle back into fashion, like short skirts or bushy mustaches. But sometimes fads disappear entirely: Powdered wigs are unlikely soon to make a triumphal comeback.

Or, more pertinently, consider the once-venerable institution of formal dueling. Although it was condemned by both civil and religious authorities, the practice persisted as long as it was supported by the duelists’ peers. It eventually faded not because of social reforms, but because a consensus developed that dueling (or “meeting on the field of honor,” as duelists called it with characteristic self-infatuation) was really rather silly. Dueling died out when it was met not with awe, but with derision.

Young men of the social set that once dueled do not seem to have become any less contentious or self-centered; they still seem to be deeply concerned about matters of honor and self-image; and they still are quick to take offense. But they no longer duel--or even see it as a possible option. A fabled institution simply went out of fashion and has never returned.

Similarly, blood feuding, which used to be standard practice everywhere in Europe, has vanished in most of it. It might be productive to greet its renewed appeal in places like Bosnia and Northern Ireland with demands not only that the perpetrators shape up, but that they grow up.

There is no guarantee that gang warfare will go out of fashion like formal dueling, of course. Already some gang members are threatening to start killing each other again unless someone comes up with good jobs for them--a proposition that is soberly reported as a penetrating social message rather than derided as a dazzlingly absurd one. But Los Angeles has often been a fashion leader. Killing a guy because he is wearing the wrong colors can be seen, after all, to be about as sensible as self-flagellation (a practice that once inspired great awe and mystery). Perhaps gang warfare will eventually become as popular.