Growing Up Under Siege : It’s dangerous out there. Guns in our schools. Gangs on our corners. Massacres in our movies. Kids running wild all night. Four families share their ways of coping with a threatening world.

Last March, seventh-grader Chris Lopez took a loaded semi-automatic handgun to Niguel Hills Middle School in suburban Laguna Niguel. It was a matter of self-defense, Chris said; he had heard rumors of death threats from another student.

Although no one was injured, the incident jolted school district officials, several of whom had children in the junior high. The issue of guns on campus was no longer merely headline material; it hit them where they lived.

Insisting it was an isolated incident, Capistrano Unified School District administrators invoked a “zero tolerance” policy and expelled Chris. The goal, said Superintendent James Fleming, was “to make schools safer places and to send a message loud and clear: There is no place for weapons in schools.”

But what many adults don’t understand, contends Chris, 14, is that today’s world of adolescence is light-years away from the one they knew.

“There used to be fights with fists,” he says. “Now, they take out a knife or a gun and that’s it for you.”

The violence surrounding our children is not only a matter of teen-agers fighting. Children of all ages commit violent acts. They witness violence at home and on movie and TV screens; they are victims of violent acts committed by adults. Now that the violence is turning increasingly deadly, society is asking: How did we get to this point? And what can we do about it?

Public dissatisfaction is reaching a “critical mass,” said Deborah Prothrow-Stith, assistant dean at Harvard University School of Public Health. “I think it’s the next big movement in our country--to prevent violence in our relationships.”

The United States is notorious for the highest homicide rate among developed countries. But because of shifting definitions of crime and problems of accurate reporting, experts can only guess at the real increase and extent of violence. Some people, in fact, argue we are not more violent than ever, but that our increasing numbers only make it seem so.

But one definite measure of the violence that surrounds our children--youth homicide--has risen so dramatically that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has labeled it an epidemic threatening the public health. The toll is highest for children under 5, whose deaths are mostly caused by abuse, and for adolescents, killed mostly by their peers.

In Los Angeles, the murder of teen-agers jumped 20% in five years, accounting in 1991 for 64% of all preventable teen deaths--surpassing car accidents and suicide--according to Children Now, a Los Angeles-based children’s advocacy organization.

Moreover, officials estimate that, in general, for each homicide there are an additional 100 nonfatal injuries from shootings, stabbings or beatings.

It’s difficult to pinpoint the causes of violence. Nonfatal violence--child, spousal and elder abuse--cuts across class and geography, but fatal violence is more concentrated in poor communities, Prothrow-Stith said. “We don’t understand all of the causal factors, but we have some very good ideas.

“Clearly, children who witness a lot of violence, or are victims of violence in early childhood, are at risk. It’s clear the presence of a gun increases the risk for fatal violence. It’s clear watching lots of violence on TV, news and movies has an impact on children’s behavior.”

Some suggest children who grow up without fathers, especially if they are poor, are at greater risk for committing violence. Others say aggression can result from patterns of parenting: inept discipline, poor monitoring of children’s time, and little positive involvement.

All factors contribute, Prothrow-Stith said. But she and other violence-prevention practitioners argue that adults’ confused attitudes regarding violence are largely to blame.

“We literally teach our children to like violence, to laugh at violence, to enjoy violence,” said Prothrow-Stith. “We don’t want a wimp for a child. We want a child who can take care of him- or herself. . . . At our worst, we’re telling our kids, ‘You go back outside, you beat him up, or I’m going to beat you.’ ”

As a result, some kids want to arm themselves, others are afraid to go outside, and others have become so desensitized to violence they do not consider it unusual or terrible, said Leonard Eron, chair of the American Psychological Assn.’s Youth Violence Commission.

But through it all, many individuals--like some communities--are resilient. Not every child who watches TV or grows up in a violent, poor or single-parent family in the inner city becomes violent. Children in the same families, or the same communities with the same risk factors, take different paths.

Today, you will meet four Southland families whose lives have been touched by violence in the suburbs and in the inner cities:

* a father who plans to teach his children how to use guns;

* a girl who, secure in her parents’ rules, relies on herself for protection;

* a mother and father who, rather than shunning violent movies, embrace them;

* a father who demands more help from the schools.

As each household meets the challenge of children and violence, one thing is clear: adults play a crucial role.

South-Central Image

Kwaku Jones grew up in South-Central Los Angeles, playing war games with a BB gun in open fields. Now, Jones, an unemployed aerospace worker, is raising his own children in South-Central where fields are few and the war games and the guns are real.

He has adjusted gradually to the change so that he does not panic or show fear of the violence in his neighborhood. One day last year, for example, he was driving with his four children in the car when he turned a corner into a stampede of wide-eyed people who seemed to be running for their lives. He saw a man pointing a gun directly at him.

“I pulled over to the side of the road and parked,” Jones said. “I made sure my kids were out of line of fire.” After the man decided not to shoot, Jones made a U-turn and drove home.

His street, lined with trees and neatly cropped lawns, seems a pleasant neighborhood for Jones and his wife, Charolette, to raise their children: Rashida, 6; twins Jamila and Jamaal, 4; and Safiya, 2. But many neighbors bar their windows, aware of the drug dealers in the community.

At the end of the block is the elementary school his oldest daughter attends. Every weekday morning, Jones walks Rashida the 100 yards from his house to the school. For months, he said, they have passed the same dead cat, despite his calls to animal control authorities. To him, the carcass symbolizes how the rest of the city neglects his community.

Jones wonders about the proliferation of firearms in his neighborhood. “There are very few places you can buy guns in the inner city,” he observed. “I think a lot about how these guns get here.”

“I don’t like to say ‘conspiracy,’ ” he added. “But I lean toward some sort of system that funnels these things into our community deliberately.”

Jones sees the police presence in his neighborhood as “superficial.” “It’s like spitting on a forest fire when you’re holding the torch that lit the thing, or sitting in the fire truck and not going after the guy with the torch.”

On the other hand, despite the deterioration of South-Central, Jones contends it’s not as bad as its image. As evidence, he cites the fact that he’s known only three people who have had their cars stolen at gunpoint. If others think that’s a lot, he conceded, “maybe I’ve built up certain defenses.”

Jones believes his children are in no “extreme danger” in South-Central--as long as they learn survival skills, as he has. Jones does not show fear of gang members. He does not panic at the sight of a gun. He relies on an inner sense of self and values derived from an African-centered Christianity.

While he has no plans to provide his children with weapons, he wants to make sure they know how to shoot a gun, starting at age 10.

“I even want them to know if they see a revolver pointed at them whether it’s loaded or not.”

Jones called his approach conservative, compared to some other parents in the neighborhood who have taken their children to the morgue or actually shot animals in front of them to impress the kids with a gun’s power.

“We understand (guns) are there. We cannot be afraid of them. If you don’t have an understanding of guns, it can cost you your life.”

He hopes Jamaal, his only son, will walk away from fights when he can, fight when he must and, most of all, understand the circumstances that lead to trouble.

He also wants to provide his children with spiritual education so they know that “even if the worst thing happens, their soul is protected.”

Recently, Jones started taking his son to Rites of Passage, a Saturday program at Faith United Methodist Church, where a half-dozen men volunteer as mentors to about 30 boys, many of them from fatherless homes. Rites of Passage programs, which developed in the 1960s and became popular in inner cities in the ‘80s, aim to provide positive male role models for young African-American boys as they move into adulthood, teaching them to appreciate their African ancestry.

At a recent Saturday program, the men hugged one another and shared stories of how other men supported them in vulnerable moments. Jones told how a childhood buddy helped him realize their war games were getting out of hand when Jones wanted to shoot the rival soldiers in the head. “Playing with guns is flat-out crazy,” he told the boys.

Jones believes it’s important for his son to interact with older men--women dominate many families, schools and churches in his community--because there is a dearth of male role models, besides homeboys. Jones also volunteers once a week at his daughter’s school to offer a positive adult male presence.

He is confident that his family can “deal with the everyday reality of violence and drugs. I’m more concerned about the future than the present. The future is the question and jobs are a big part of that,” he said. “There’s nothing sure to say about the future of South-Central.”

Even so, Jones has not lost hope for the next generation.

“No matter how bad things get, they were once better and can be better again.”

A Window on Downtown

Graciela Martinez was born 12 years ago “in the Kaiser,” but has lived ever since in a second-story apartment at the corner of Venice and Hope in Downtown L.A.

Through the front windows, she hears the continual sirens headed for the nearby emergency room of the California Medical Center of Los Angeles. She has seen children in the hall playing with needles left by drug addicts who slept there. From the front porch, she has watched the landlord shrink from confronting drunken men urinating on the walls even though he scolds little children for lesser offenses. To get to school, she catches the RTD from a corner occupied by drug dealers and prostitutes.

“I’ve lived here all my life and I know what’s going on,” she said.

She knows, for instance, that death might come to anyone at any time. “My friend Dulce, she’s 14 right now, there was a drive-by and they shot her. She’s all right now. Some gang members were trying to shoot some other gang members who used to live here. They only caught one of them.”

Graciela also knows she should not rely on just any police officer to protect her. “It depends on who the cop is,” she said. “Most of the thing is relying on you,” she added, directing her small thumbs to her chest. “When it comes to protecting you, you have to protect yourself.”

She knows not to hang out with gang members even if they are friends and neighbors. “I know I risk being shot by somebody passing by as soon as I start talking to them.

“Right now, you can’t even look at a gangster on the corner. Right away they’re thinking you’re meaning something with your look.”

Most children who grow up in the inner city do not become violent. Researchers, who do not yet fully understand resiliency, say the reasons can be as varied as inborn temperament, high IQ or being the first born in a small family.

Graciela thinks parents make the difference.

“I know some people here, without mentioning names, who let their kids out on the street until 11 or 12 no matter if it’s still a school day,” she said with alarm.

“You could live in the worst place but if your parents really take care of you and they’re really strict with you and don’t let you dress the way gang members dress and don’t give you the habit of being outside a long time, I think that nothing will happen to you.”

She said her mother insists she come in by 9 p.m., always tell her where she is going, and will check the front porch before allowing her to go outside.

Evenings when the ice cream man comes “we just go downstairs, buy an ice cream and come up. We don’t really wander.”

Sometimes, however, when it’s still daylight, she and her friends take a walk around the block. They pass a parking lot where little children play ball, and walk past the restaurant and alleys where drug dealers signal one another with special whistles.

Finally, they arrive at Graciela’s favorite place to hang out--the hospital, with its brick and jacaranda tree-lined patio, its cool waiting rooms and clean cafe. The guards in the lobby and in the emergency room smile and greet her by name.

The emergency room offers her some of the excitement and adventure she craves. “People have come in with blood all over and stuff.”

When Graciela grows up, she wants to be an undercover police officer. She has learned something about the occupation by interviewing police who come into her block when there is trouble.

“If you’re an undercover cop, it’s not the same thing every day.” It could be dangerous, she admitted. “But that’s what I like about it.

“It’s adventurous, but it has danger in the middle. That’s what makes the whole thing suspenseful.”

If she were fatally shot on the job, she said she would be sad for her family but not for herself. “If it’s got to happen,” she shrugged, “it happens.”

San Clemente R-Ratings

When the Fergusons of San Clemente go to an R-rated movie, it’s almost always a family affair.

In the past few weeks, Janice and Jeff Ferguson have taken their children, Chris, 10, and Melissa, 8, to “Cliffhanger” (one sadistic beating, one stabbing on stalactites, numerous explosions, falls, shootings and near-deaths) and “Last Action Hero” (a PG-13 parody with one kid thrown off a balcony twice, an electrocution in the rain, and numerous explosions, falls and machine-gunnings.)

“It was cool. It had a lot of comedy in it,” Chris said. His favorite line was “when Arnold Schwarzenegger said in his last movie he killed 108 people and in this movie he only killed 48 people.”

Said Melissa: “I think it was good.”

Janice, a nurse, is not worried that violent movies will harm her children. “They know it’s not real,” she said. Besides, she added, “I think they need to know everything is not rosy.” (She draws the line at heavy sexual films such as “Basic Instinct.”)

They’ve seen most of the action movies and own videos of their favorites: “Rambo,” “Terminator,” and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

“Universal Soldier”? “Die Hard”?

“You could keep naming them off and I’d have it (on tape),” Jeff said.

He draws the line at scary suspense films like “Cape Fear” because “I thought it would be too emotionally upsetting for myself and I didn’t think my kids would understand it.”)

Jeff, who is a U.S. Navy petty officer and church deacon, explains: “Violence is a big part of our society, and explaining the different aspects of violence to children is important, not only so they don’t repeat it, but so they know how to avoid it.”

Many others argue that movies are a risky way to educate children about violence.

Research on the effects of screen violence has focused mostly on television, not movies, but the vast majority of studies concludes that exposure to television violence results in more aggressive behavior in children and adults, according to the National Research Council, the principal operating agency of the National Academy of Sciences, a private institution which advises the federal government.

Other researchers say screen violence may also make viewers see the world as a frightening place where protection is required, or numb their normal response to others’ pain.

In the media, the results of violence don’t look permanent, said Leonard Eron, chair of the American Psychological Assn.’s Commission on Youth and Violence. “You don’t see real pain or consequences. (Children) just think it’s transient. It’s a bad lesson for youngsters to learn.”

Where early studies showed only boys were influenced, recent research has concluded girls are also affected. Television violence is especially harmful for children in the inner city who are surrounded by real violence, Eron said. “It corroborates the idea that violence is an ordinary way to solve problems and to get what you want. So violence becomes normative.”

But Jeff agrees with the movie-makers common rebuttal that “the movies illustrate our times. If we lived in a nonviolent world, they wouldn’t be showing those things.”

Jeff said he has worked through some unspecified childhood abuse issues of his own and has learned not to vent his frustration in a violent way. In his view, the world is not necessarily more violent than it used to be--people just see it more--on TV, news and movies.

“The key factor in today’s society is parental supervision.” He said he encourages his children to ask him anything about what they see on the screen.

It appears that parents can mediate screen violence, Eron said. They can help, he added, by watching shows together, explaining the difference between reality and movie making, especially to children under 8 who cannot always tell the difference, and pointing out that the hero’s solution to a problem may not be the best one.

Eron believes the relationship between real and reel violence is probably reciprocal. But, eventually, “life follows art and they (movies) will make us more violent.”

Do the kids think that kids who watch violent movies become more violent?

“I don’t know,” Chris said. Sometimes he said he kicks other kids at school when he gets in a fight. But even though his heroes in the movies kill a lot of people, “I’d never do that.”

Melissa said other children who watch violent movies might be prone to more aggressive behavior, but not her or her brother. “We’re used to it,” she said.

Laguna Niguel Standoff

The last weekend in February, Chris Lopez stewed over a rumored death threat made by another student at his new school in Laguna Niguel. The boy, he said, had taunted him with racial slurs. Chris had seen him with a knife. He had seen the Nazi swastikas on the arms of the boy’s pals.

“I was thinking, ‘This guy’s going to really do it,’ ” Chris said.

So, on the morning of Monday, March 1, after his father, his father’s fiancee, and his two brothers had left their apartment, Chris went into his father’s bedroom to look for the .22 semiautomatic handgun father and son had used in target practice. The seven-grader found the gun in pieces and spent 15 minutes assembling and loading it. Then he put it in his backpack and headed for Niguel Hills Middle School.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Chris said. “I didn’t bring it to shoot somebody. I brought it because I was really scared.” The gun made him feel safer.

Students take weapons to school to show off, to intimidate other students or to be fashionable. But the big change in recent years is that they are carrying weapons to protect themselves, said George Butterfield, deputy director of the National School Safety Center in Westlake Village.

Butterfield said there are more weapons in middle schools than high schools because the older weapon-carriers are often expelled and tend to drop out of school altogether. Last year, 1,600 students were expelled from schools in Los Angeles County, mostly for assaults and carrying weapons.

Students tend to take more weapons their first years of middle or high school, Butterfield said. “They are insecure the first year. They’re coming from a different educational environment so the perception is (that) it’s a much more dangerous place.

“Administrators say it’s not as bad as kids think. That may be true, but it’s totally irrelevant. As we all know, perception is reality in this area.”

Chris Lopez carried the gun to class and stored it in a locker during physical education class. It was in his jacket during a lunchtime confrontation with the other boy. The facts of the confrontation--Did Chris pull the gun? Did the gun even figure in the argument?--are in dispute, but the gun was not fired.

Consequently expelled from the district under a “zero tolerance” policy, Chris served 90 days in juvenile hall on the felony charge of carrying a weapon on campus.

Who’s responsible?

Butterfield said that, typically, parents and school officials tend to blame each other.

School superintendent James A. Fleming said he has a message for Chris’ father, Mark Lopez: “Mr. Lopez, please get your act together, counsel your children . . .

“The best way Mr. Lopez can help us is by being the best parent he can to his children, making sure if there are any guns in his house they are kept out of his reach.”

Mark Lopez, a law clerk who is the son of two Los Angeles police officers, grew up around guns. Like 47% of Americans, Lopez kept guns at home, in his case for target shooting and protection. He said he has taught his boys to “defend themselves--with anything” but only after telling an adversary to stop, pushing him away or calling for help.

Lopez does not deny his son’s wrongdoing. But he said he warned school officials the previous Friday that racial tensions at school might erupt in trouble and blames them for inaction.

He organized a community group SENTRY (Student Education Toward Non-Violence on Campus and Teaching Respect for All Youth) to raise awareness of the intolerance he believes provoked his son. But, he said, “They (school district officials) don’t want to hear anything we have to say.”

Fleming said he and other school officials have spent hours talking to Lopez, but that he doubts only three months’ experience in the school district qualifies Lopez as an “expert” on its school environments. “The main help we need from Mr. Lopez is for him to help his child” by making sure guns are not accessible in his home and by counseling his children to find nonviolent alternatives to settling disputes.

There is another, third, group that also bears responsibility, Butterfield says: fellow students who often know about loaded guns on campus and don’t tell.

“I’ve heard of as many as 50 people who have actually seen it or heard someone had (a loaded gun) and frequently not just that day. They say, ‘We heard that guy’s been packing that thing for a month,’ ” Butterfield said. “It’s not just a code of silence. A lot just don’t know the risk involved until someone is shot and killed. And they don’t have good relationships with the adults on campus.”

Chris said his best friend knew but said nothing throughout the morning as Chris sat with a loaded gun through computer class and science class and then put the weapon in his locker before PE class. Finally, after the lunchtime confrontation, the friend told a vice principal. Then the administrator asked Chris if he had a weapon, disarmed him and called the Orange County Sheriff’s deputies and Mark Lopez.

The terms of Chris’ probation specify there be no guns in the Lopez home for a year. After that, Lopez said he will keep his guns at the target range--for appearances’ sake. “Because of the spotlight on Chris, it’s probably best if nobody can say anything.”

This summer Chris will finish seventh grade at a private learning center. In the fall, he will attend school in another district.