Shooting Our Way to Oblivion

Crime is striking a nerve in most Americans, including President Clinton. While in Los Angeles Sunday, he again took up a refrain that he had sounded before an African-American congregation in Memphis earlier this month: that America must “take our communities back, neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, child by child” from crime and violence.

Perhaps with Washington’s help, with more police officers and more jobs--and a lot more gun control--we can begin to do that.

However, as the President emphasized, government can do only so much. “We have to make up our minds that we will no longer tolerate children killing children, children . . . being better armed than police officers. We are going to have to do better,” Clinton said at a church in the Lincoln Heights area of Los Angeles.

Clinton, as had many others in Los Angeles, expressed horror over the weekend murder of Bianca Hernandez. The 2-year-old was shot in the head while riding in an auto near Echo Park with her mother and other gang-affiliated girls and women. Police said the women had slashed the tires of a car being used by a rival gang, which retaliated with a spray of bullets. The result: a dead child.

Violent, gun-involved crime is a regional epidemic. No one is safe. Orange County suffered one of the bloodiest weekends in a record-setting year of violence. In unrelated shootings, five men were killed and two others were wounded. In at least three of the attacks, as in the killing of Bianca Hernandez, street gangs reportedly played a role. How many more families will grieve this year?