Recent gun violence shows we are failing TN children

I wonder why more people didn’t complain then, and don’t now about why we can’t do more to solve the violent crime problem involving our youngsters.

“Lord, our children are having children, and we don’t know what to do.

“Lord, our children are killing children, and we don’t know what to do.

“Help us, Lord, to hear their cries. Tell us what to do.’’

That prayer is from Marian Wright Edelman’s “Guide My Feet, Prayers and Meditations on Loving and Working for Children” (Beacon Press). I used it once before in an op-ed column that I wrote for this newspaper exactly 22 years ago this month under the headline, “WE ARE NOT LISTENING FOR THE CRIES OF OUR CHILDREN” (April 22, 1999).

And here we are again, seemingly still not listening for the cries of our children. I am hurt, I am embarrassed and you should feel the same way.

Austin-east High shooting death marks only the latest gun fatality

Let’s face the truth. We seem to be going backward when it comes to the welfare of our children, especially as it relates to violence.

“I don’t know what’s going on in Knoxville,’’ my younger brother, Adrian Mallory Lewis, said as we talked over the telephone Monday night. “I think they just received a federal grant in Knoxville to combat gang violence and now this happens.’’

Adrian, who is a practice manager for an insurance technology firm and an associate minister at a Portland, Oregon area Baptist church, and I were talking a few hours after it was reported that a 17year-old 11th grader at Knoxville’s Austin-east High School was killed and a police officer wounded in a shooting at the school.

No one else was injured. The police officer worked as a resource officer at the East Knoxville school.

“I wonder what is the root cause?” Adrian asked. “Is it a lack of hope? Is anyone trying to work with students. Many parents seem to be failing in their role.’’

The death of an Austin-east student on Monday marked the fifth Knoxville teen to lose his or her life to violent crime this year. And at least three of the other four youngsters also attended Austin-east before dying violent deaths.

In one of the shooting deaths, a 14year-old and a 16-year-old have been charged with homicide.

“What do we do?’’ asked Adrian, who happens to be a 1989 graduate of Knoxville’s Austin-east. “I received a text earlier today (Monday afternoon) about the shooting at the school and I couldn’t believe it, rather I hated to believe it.’’

We can’t have young people carrying guns to school or elsewhere

When I worked at The Tennessean I often received letters from readers wondering why I wrote what they thought were a lot of columns about the issue of race.

I wonder why more people didn’t complain then, and don’t now about why we can’t do more to solve the violent crime problem involving our youngsters.

And that violence is not just taking place in Knoxville. Nashville has more than its share of youth violence as well.

Just hours after the Austin-east incident took place in Knoxville on Monday afternoon two children in Nashville, one 2, and the other 3, were shot Monday night along with two men, a 23year-old and a 26-year-old near 25th Avenue, North and Dowlan Street as people gathered in a parking lot at the Cumberland Garden Apartments. Authorities said the 3-year-old has died.

While I am bothered by the police killings these days of blacks here and elsewhere, and Tennessee governor Bill Lee pushing legislation that will allow most adults to carry handguns without obtaining a permit, it really pains me to see a continuation of violent crimes being committed by our youngsters.

Where did the Austin-east student get the gun that resulted in a police officer being shot and him losing his life? Where did the gun come from that killed the 3-year-old Nashville youngster on Monday night?

While I don’t expect answers to those two questions anytime soon, I do hope that Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and others will pay more attention to the welfare of our young people. We can’t have them carry guns to school or anywhere else.

Their lives are too precious to lose. I wonder if anyone else feels the same way.

Dwight Lewis, a Knoxville native, graduated from Austin High School in 1965 before it merged with East High and became Austin-east High. He served as a reporter, columnist and editorial page editor at The Tennessean for 40 years before retiring in 2011.

CALVIN MATTHEIS/NEWS SENTINEL Alexus Page, girlfriend of the teenage boy who was shot Monday, weeps during a prayer vigil outside of Austin-east Magnet High School in Knoxville, Tenn. on Tuesday. Community members came together to pray and speak about the rash of gun violence that has left five of the school’s students dead, and one on school grounds yesterday that left an officer wounded.