Photo illustration by DAVE HILL/Daily Bruin Senior Staff
Handguns are the most commonly used weapon in homicides in the
United States, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
By Bimal Rajkomar
Daily Bruin Contributor
The force of a bullet sends a victim sprawling to the floor. The
victim has a chance of living if it hasn’t punctured their
heart or a major artery.
But if the victim is shot in the head, things are different.
“Their face could be destroyed,” said Dr. Carolyn
Sachs, assistant professor at the Emergency Medicine Center.
Some scream in agony and others cry, not out of pain, but fear
of dying.
“They’re scared,” Sachs said.
“It’s a life-threatening event.”
The paramedic takes the victim to the hospital. If it’s
UCLA, the victim is taken to the “resuscitation suite,”
where they’re stripped of their clothes while doctors try to
save the victim’s life.
“It’s not glamorous,” Sachs said.
“They’re lying flat on their back looking up at five to
10 people.”
Yet in many movies and throughout America, perceptions of gun
violence are different. The hero kills the bad guys, and though
injured, goes on to live. In real life, those lines are more often
blurred, and gun violence can affect all facets of life.
“I buried my 84th young person on Friday ““ killed in
a gang shooting,” said Father Gregory J. Boyle, director of
Jobs for a Future and Homeboy Industries.
Boyle was one of several members of a round-table discussion
titled “First Monday 2000: United to End Gun Violence,”
at the UCLA School of Law on Monday.
 PRIYA SHARMA Professor Susan Sorenson
speaks at a conference focusing on the legal aspect of gun violence
at the UCLA School of Law on Monday. The discussion, part of a
national campaign promoting education and action to reduce gun
violence, introduced hypothetical legislation to members of the
panel.
Boyle apologized to the more than 100 attendees for being late
because he had to break up a gang fight where one member pulled out
a gun.
Some people are faced with the reality of gun violence on a
daily basis, and are looking for an end to what they see as the
cause of the problem.
“You take law-abiding citizens, you put them in their
homes when they are angry and there’s a gun there ““
there’s a higher risk of there being a dead person than when
there isn’t a gun.” said Susan Sorenson, UCLA professor
of public health.
She said a woman is 2.5 times as likely to be shot by her male
partner as she is to be shot, stabbed, strangled, bludgeoned, or
killed any other way by a stranger.
While many speakers on the panel supported most of the
hypothetical legislation designed to curb gun violence, the main
voice of opposition was Eugene Volokh, UCLA constitutional law
professor and gun scholar.
An expert on the Second Amendment, Volokh supported the
public’s right to own guns and said that a ban on handguns
could result in more fatal gun shootings as higher-caliber shotguns
would be used instead.
“Criminals will always be able to get guns if they want
to.” he said, adding that prohibition did not stop alcohol
consumption and the present war on drugs has not stopped their
use.
To show the media’s portrayal of gun violence, one segment
featured scenes from Quake II, The Matrix and lyrics by rap artist
Eminem.
But in light of recent government investigations into the
marketing of media violence, some panelists said they had deeper
concerns.
“We couldn’t even afford those things,” said
Gilbert Salinas, Program Coordinator of Teens on Target, a
program to train youths at risk to become peer educators on
violence prevention.
Acknowledging the media’s influence, Salinas stressed the
importance of parental involvement and education.
Salinas has been confined to a wheelchair since being
accidentally shot by another gang member. When he was 10 years
old, he saw his older brother get shot and killed.
Most panelists agreed the problem starts much earlier and that
the focus should be on paying more attention to children and trying
to steer them away from guns.
“What you need is parents who pay attention to both kids
and the degree of difficulty to raise kids in a community like
mine,” Boyle said. “The one thing that connects both
rich and poor kids is the absence of adult influence on their
lives.”
Boyle stressed the need for community and police involvement in
the community.
U.S. Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas expressed similar sentiments
when he advocated a more involved probation system and emphasized
the importance of creating jobs for young people.
“You disarm them and put them in custody and when they
come out, you actually have something for them,” Mayorkas
said.
Another discussion on gun legislation will be held Oct. 16 from
6-8 p.m. at Room 1447 in the UCLA School of Law. For more
information, call the Center for Public Interest Programs at
(310)-794-4061.