GUNFIRE

19 West Side Shootings

THE right to bear arms certainly has plenty of adherents in Charleston's
low-income, drug-polluted West Side neighborhoods, where multitudes of
youths carry pistols and 19 shootings have happened so far this year.

Last week, reporter Greg Stone wrote an analysis of the high-crime sector,
where jobless young men peddle crystallized cocaine daily, despite
intensified police patrols. He reported that a 17-year-old shot a
20-year-old to death Aug. 6, bringing the 2002 gunfire tally to 16. Before
Stone's article was printed Monday morning, three more West Side shootings
happened during the weekend.

Law-abiding, conscientious, West Side families are dismayed by the growing
violence that impairs their already difficult lives. The sector has a
median household income of just $20,868, far below the $34,000 Kanawha
County average. Selling crack and using pistols to protect the illegal
business is one of the few ways inner-city young men can support
themselves. Since America is awash with millions of pistols, and control
laws are a joke, it's easy for jobless young men to go armed.

Some residents feel that most of Charleston doesn't care whether youths in
the neighborhood shoot each other. One woman told reporter Stone that many
Kanawha Valley people see last week's murder as "just another black person
dead."

Two West Side churches are waging a valiant struggle to save youths from
the crack-and-pistols nightmare. The Rev. Matthew Watts of Grace Bible
Church leads Hope Development Corp., which asks businesses to hire jobless
teens. Although such hiring costs companies nothing - the wages are
reimbursed by the federal Work Force Investment Act - many companies won't
employ the at-risk youths, the minister lamented.

Watts and his group also want to turn the vacant Tiskelwah School into a
senior center, tutoring place, recreational spot and home for a
telemarketing firm that will provide jobs.

Meanwhile, the Rev. James Ealy and his New Covenant Church are trying to
reopen the Second Avenue Neighborhood Center and use it for similar efforts
to rescue young people.

City leaders and other concerned Charlestonians should do everything
possible to support these volunteer projects, which may save some youths
from joblessness, despair, drugs and gun violence on the streets.