Steps Needed to Combat Gangs

The Feb. 8 Times reads like so many others before it: a story about a young child shot up by heavily armed teenage predators; a lead editorial on some frail attempts by some neighborhoods and communities to reduce gang violence; an opinion of a physician on the near-futility of organizing efforts to remove gang tattoos from some of the many thousands brought before our criminal justice system.

Efforts to rid our communities of gangs are either nonexistent or not working.

It is no surprise that the editorial cited a 43% rise in Orange County gang membership in the last few years. It appears that many of these are now second- and third-generation gang members.

The homes and communities in which they are spawned have demonstrated a complete indifference or tolerance for this worsening, appalling mess. Entwined in a culture of crime and drugs, they have little or no concept of good parenting and citizenship.

The remainder of us are left either to suffer in the midst of this peril or to try to avoid all contact with growing portions of urban Southern California.

Clearly, taking real action is long overdue. Restoration of safe neighborhoods and communities will require immediate, total abolition of the manufacture, importation, sale, use and possession of all handguns, rifles, assault weapons, etc., and the ammunition used in them.

It will also require immediate, total abolition of the manufacture, importation, sale, use and possession of spray paint. There is no use for aerosol paint that cannot be satisfied with brush or roll-on paint.

With the disappearance of graffiti, major portions of Southern California might stop looking like the worst of the Third World.

PAUL GENSER

Santa Ana