Securing Buildings vs. Controlling Firearms : Rampant gun crime demands comprehensive curbs

For the besieged, law-abiding residents of the Robert Taylor Homes and nearby Stateway Gardens project, both in Chicago, President Clinton’s call Saturday for stepped up security measures at public-housing facilities must come as some small comfort. These projects, not unlike too many other poor neighborhoods in Los Angeles and across the country, have become virtual free-fire zones. Residents there live in terror amid relentless, violent crime. Warfare between rival gangs in the two Chicago projects over Easter resulted in 300 shooting incidents in just four days.

THE PLAN: Clinton and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros outlined steps that housing officials in Chicago and elsewhere can use to regain control of their buildings from gangs and drug dealers. These include the use of armed police and metal detectors at building entrances, construction of fences, weapons searches in common areas, such as grounds and stairwells, and frisking of individuals believed to have been involved in a crime.

The new policy came in response to a ruling by a federal judge in Chicago that wisely blocked authorities from conducting sweeps of apartments in search of weapons. Such mass searches without probable cause violate the Fourth Amendement’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizure, the court said.

The new Clinton policy may face another court test. And even if the Administration prevails, project residents, including children, must still place themselves in mortal danger off the project grounds just by walking to school or the market. They will still risk gun death or injury from a domestic squabble or an accidental shooting in their own apartment unit, upstairs from the metal detectors, out of sight of the housing police.

But to our mind, the President’s policy, and the largely sympathetic response it has generated, is more noteworthy for what it reveals about our unwillingness, as a nation, to address directly the wild proliferation of guns and gun crime.

Metal detectors in the lobbies of public-housing projects? Sure. Add them to the list of “secured” facilities in our midst: schools, banks, courthouses, airports. These measures help to a point. But that point is usually at the building’s perimeter.

In Los Angeles, banks increasingly shield tellers behind bulletproof windows; guards watch each door. Not surprisingly, criminals now find banks harder targets--bank robberies in Southern California dropped 37% last year over 1992, according to the FBI. But in some cases criminals are moving, literally, across the street to busy supermarkets where cash drawers are temptingly near the store’s entrance. And gun crime continues wickedly apace in the streets, where no metal detectors can be installed to prevent carjackings, drive-by shootings and muggings.

THE CHOICE: The stark choice is between more metal detectors, more bullet-proof barriers, more fear and crime in the streets--or comprehensive gun control. Between these options, there is no real choice. Yet, a chimerical interpretation of the Second Amendment along with hefty contributions from the National Rifle Assn. seem to have clouded the vision of too many lawmakers.

Rep. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Sunday that supporters of a federal assault-weapons ban are 15 to 20 votes short of passage in the House. The Senate crime bill, passed last fall, contains such a ban but the House version, up for more debate this week, does not. It must.

And in Sacramento, a thoughtful, much-needed bill that would severely restrict private possession of handguns faces its first committee test today . Passage of AB 3210 should be regarded by all Californians as the first step away from the efforts to secure more and more buildings--but that succeed only in channeling more gun crime into the streets.