If you live in Philadelphia today, it's time to be scolded in a front page Sunday sermon about how guns are killing children:

Philadelphia has a thriving market in illegal handguns, often purchased legally by people who resell them on the streets.

In some neighborhoods, gun trafficking is barely hidden, experts say.

"On Saturdays, the gun sellers... roam the inner-city neighborhoods, selling guns out of the trunks of their cars to anyone with the money," said Elijah Anderson, a professor of social sciences at the University of Pennsylvania and an authority on the causes of urban violence.

Anderson said the cheapest weapons were those known to have been used in a murder. On the street, they're known as "guns with a body on them."

"We have guns everywhere now," said David Fattah, cofounder of the House of Umoja, which runs one of the city's oldest antiviolence programs. "You have people riding through neighborhoods selling guns from the back of their cars."

Last year, 171 young people were shot at in the city. Most of them were wounded, police say.

Philadelphia has long sought to stem the tide of illegal weapons. A bill to limit gun purchases in Pennsylvania to one a month is stalled in Harrisburg.

"Guns are one of the most serious issues we have to address," said Paul J. Fink, who chairs a multi-agency group that has reviewed every youth homicide in Philadelphia since 1995.

Their study found that guns were involved in 91 percent of killings involving 18- and 19-year-olds and 59 percent of those younger.

"People are going to get killed," said Bilal Qayyum, a leader of Men United for a Better Philadelphia, an antiviolence group. "There's going to be stabbings, bats, but the easy availability of guns is creating this explosion."

But our sermon has barely begun.

"How many funerals, how many marches, how many hospital visits does it take before people say it's time to take action?" asks Shelly Yanoff, executive director of Philadelphia Citizens for Children and Youth.

Featured in the hard copy (but not the Internet version) is Dorothy Johnson-Speight (founder of anti-gun group Mothers in Charge), a woman who tragically lost a son who was shot to death by a psychopath angry about a parking dispute:

Khaaliq Jabbar Johnson, 24, was gunned down early on a Thursday morning over a parked car.

At the time, Johnson, who worked with kids who had behavioral problems, had lived in the Olney neighborhood just three weeks. He'd moved from Mount Airy to share a house on American Street near Champlost Avenue with his brother, Shamsid-Din Jabbar, in November 2001.

It didn't take long for Johnson to meet his neighbor Ernest Odom, 28, who had been convicted twice for gun offenses. Odom screamed at Johnson about a friend who had parked on the curb of the narrow street outside their houses. Johnson, who had just been accepted into an accelerated master's program at a Delaware college, went next door to try to calm Odom.

Two days later, about 3:30 a.m. on Dec. 6, Johnson returned home after driving a friend home. He parked his Jeep in the back. But someone else had parked on the curb out front, and in the dead of night, Odom was quietly waiting.

Johnson headed up the sidewalk to his front door when Odom ambushed him. He pumped eight bullets into Johnson's torso and legs. When the gun jammed, Odom stood over Johnson's body and kicked him in the face, said Assistant District Attorney Judith Rubino, who prosecuted the case.

The killer, Ernest Odom, is a multiple murderer who continues his psychotic behavior in prison:

While on trial for the Dec. 6, 2001, killing of Khaaliq Jabbar Johnson, Odom, 28, allegedly had a homemade knife strapped to his leg when he returned to Curran-Fromhold prison.

Since January, he has allegedly stabbed two inmates and assaulted a prison guard. Last month, he was sentenced to life in prison for killing Johnson. His trial for the slaying of Justin Donnelly is scheduled for April.

"He's a clear danger, even in custody," said Assistant District Attorney Judith Rubino, who prosecuted the case. "He's a nasty, violent guy."

Johnson's and Donnelly's mothers, Dorothy Johnson-Speight and Ruth Donnelly, are on a mission to stop people like Odom. Johnson-Speight spearheads a group, Mothers In Charge, to end violence and make neighborhoods safe.

Psychiatrist Paul J. Fink (who ought to know better than to use words like "epidemic" to describe crime) also thinks more gun laws are the solution:

Paul J. Fink, M.D., a professor of psychiatry at Philadelphia's Temple University School of Medicine, chairs the American Psychiatric Association's task force on psychiatric aspects of violence. "There is a real epidemic of intermittent disasters that are difficult to classify and to lump into a single definition," he told Psychiatric Times. "There is a fabric of multiple reasons why we are looking down the barrel at these various mass murders."

Part of the reason for this epidemic, Fink said, is the increased predilection of individuals to respond violently to problems and frustrations. He blamed, to a significant extent, the news and entertainment media, which "glorify gratuitous violence, and have made it part of the American culture." These images have become commonplace, he explained. Adults see them regularly and, more worrisome, so do children.

Fink also said that over the past several decades there have been growing numbers of "disaffiliated kids" without two parents. They either have "multiple parents" or only one, and that is a disaster for many children who need an intimate, family-based support system. In addition, too many children in America are brutalized, either physically or through neglect, and they grow up to repeat these violent acts.

Children who are traumatized by witnessing or experiencing criminal or family violence often go untreated, said Fink. Meanwhile, these shootings are committed by adults and children who have grievances and frustrations but not the life skills to deal with them, so they are only left with revenge as a motivation. Although revenge has been around for a long time, Fink added, the hundreds of millions of readily available guns in the United States allow ready access to the means to accomplish savage payback.

As a result, Fink said he believes firmer gun control and greater attention to children when they are young are keys to ultimately resolving the problem.

How about at least kicking the dangerous "children" out of school? Fink believes that's a no-no -- as suspending kids from school contributes to murder:

"Another great marker for killing somebody or getting killed was multiple [school] suspensions," said psychiatrist Paul J. Fink, who cofounded the group. "We worked hard to get the school district to try to figure out what was wrong rather than to keep suspending him."

But the fault is always with someone else -- in this case, with the law abiding people whose guns haven't yet been criminalized or taken away.

Or the guns themselves. Another local anti-gun activist, Bilal Qayyum, complains that guns are as easy to buy as drugs:

In Philadelphia, the drug trade has spawned a flourishing traffic in illegal guns that sprung up to bypass state and federal laws that prohibit felons from owning firearms.

"Kids can go on the corner and buy guns like they can buy drugs," said Bilal Qayyum, cochairman of Men United for a Better Philadelphia, an antiviolence group.

"If there was serious gun control and if there were fewer guns on the street, more than half these deaths would not have happened," Qayyum said.

One solution supported by Mr. Qayyum has been simply buying the guns:

May 6, 2004 5:40 pm US/Eastern
PHILADELPHIA (KYW 1060) The groups behind a gun turn-in program in Philadelphia are upping the ante to get illegal guns off city streets. Bilal Qayyum, co-chair of Men United for a Better Philadelphia, says people can turn in a gun, no questions asked, to any police station.

"They will get a receipt to take to Cash Today Financial Center at 1418 Race Street, at which people will receive $100 cash and a $50 gift certificate to any Sneaker Villa. We really need to get to the conscious of the people of Philadelphia to do the right thing. Turn in the gun. If we were offering a penny, or nothing, the right thing to do is turn in a gun."

Simple logic, if you ask me!

Drunk drivers kill lots of people too. When are we going to sponsor an alcohol purchase program? Or a turn-in-your-car day?

The problem with alcohol and cars, obviously, is easy availability.

It's so obvious to me that gun control laws do not stop criminals from getting guns that writing this post feels like an exercise in superfluity. But I feel compelled to write it anyway, because I don't think criminals are the target of the anti-gun activists.

The target is everyone else.