Word: shotguns
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With only $25 in his wallet -- earnings from mowing a few lawns -- he quickly settled on a used Remington semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun. He was pleasantly surprised by its heft as he slid it into a canvas bag and scurried back to his truck. At 16, Doug was finally a force to be reckoned with at Father Flanagan High, in his white, working-class neighborhood of Benson and on the streets of Omaha. "If you have a gun, you have power. That's just the way it is," he says. "Guns are just a part of growing up these days...
...amazed at how easily the blade sliced through the metal. Smoothing the end with a metal file, he then cut the stock, reducing the gun by almost 2 ft. in length and transforming it into the weapon of choice among many teenage toughs: a pistol-grip, sawed-off shotgun, which he pronounces almost as one word. "Easy to hide and no need to aim. Just bam! and you clear the room," he says. Returning the gun to the canvas bag, he hurried back to his room, paused briefly to consider a hiding place, and then slid the weapon under...
Doug and his friend Scott, 15, debated this problem for several days, turning the shotgun over and over in their hands, carefully inspecting and cleaning every part. They bought a box of shells from a friend and practiced loading and unloading the gun. Finally one Saturday, they drove out of town and headed for the countryside. "We didn't know quite what we were going to do until we found this tree near a cornfield that was split right down the middle into a V," says Doug. He loaded one shell and carefully worked the gun into the crotch...
...roar of Doug's shotgun is the sound of a growing national tragedy. America's easy availability of guns and the restlessness of its youth have finally collided with horrific results. Gunshots now cause 1 of every 4 deaths among American teenagers, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Bullets killed nearly 4,200 teenagers in 1990, the most recent year for which figures are available, up from 2,500 in 1985. An estimated 100,000 students carry a gun to school, according to the National Education Association. In a survey released last week, pollster Louis Harris found alarming...
...Doug's ramblings with his sawed-off, he has peppered his neighborhood with shotgun pellets. He can't explain why he shot the dog. "What does it matter?" he asks with a shrug. Late one evening last March, he and a few friends crept up to a house and took several potshots. "I saw this dog sitting on a couch in this big window above the front porch, so I just shot him." Doug's expression is devoid of remorse or bravado as he drives by the brown, two-story house, recounting the incident one afternoon. A teenage girl with...