TV Reviews : ‘Kids Killing Kids’: Trying to Stem Tide

With reports that seem to indicate the crime rate has declined somewhat, Americans are now hearing admonishments that their fears about criminal violence are misplaced.

Yet each day 14 children will be shot and killed. One of 25 black children now in kindergarten is expected to be murdered with a gun before age 18. An estimated 100,000 children bring guns to school every day. Gunshot wounds are now the leading cause of death among all teen-age boys in America.

The statistics are from tonight’s hourlong special, “Kids Killing Kids,” a dead-serious mix of simple dramatized vignettes and commentary that offers alternatives to gun violence and emphasizes future-oriented thinking.

Performed in an unsubtle, “Afterschool Special”-style that is geared to young people--grades 5 to 12 are the target--each of four vignettes shows how a teen-age boy finds tragedy when trying to solve a problem with a gun.

A protective big brother tangles with a gangbanger, a stressed-out high achiever commits suicide over a broken romance, a promising baseball pitcher is paralyzed after he tries to confront a bully “like a man,” and another boy accidentally kills a fellow student with the gun he carries to look cool.

The twist is that each boy gets a second chance. The film reverses to the point before the gun came into the picture to show how a gunless decision can save lives.

It’s a tough sell, but an urgent one: Young people are asked to see far enough beyond an immediate problem so that talking to others, running away, or even humbling themselves to defuse a situation, are worthwhile alternatives to gun violence. The glamorization and easy obtainability of guns--from a friend, from parents’ night stands, for $25 on the street--is the condemnatory subtext.

* “Kids Killing Kids” airs at 8 tonight on CBS (Channels 2 and 8) and Fox (Channels 11 and 6), and at 5 p.m. on cable’s Faith & Values Channel.