Monday, June 9th 2008, 4:00 AM
Stanley Crouch

Bullets get around, and so do the high-speed limousines that propel them around: guns. Bullets and guns make a very cold team - notorious for not caring about the identity of the target. When the gun is fired, anyone who is not wearing armor and is hit will go down.

Bullets aren't concerned with important or unimportant, good or bad, brilliant or stupid. The bullet's job is mechanical indifference to identity, the persistent ignoring of essences.

Bullets have never cared about Presidents or rabble-rousers or masters of nonviolent engagement. This is why we were shocked by the public murders of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, the Rev. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Bullets almost canceled George Wallace's check for the right to live and even sent Ronald Reagan tumbling down.

The crack trade in the 1980s led to many illegal guns floating through the so-called inner city, where a cult of criminality was born and reinforced by the riches to be had. Thousands of people have been slaughtered over the years and guns are now so established to end conflict that touchy, armed adolescents often enjoy intimidating grown men and reversing the pecking order until brutal power comes from the bottom.

The recent shootings in New York have led to one new thought: the sale of illegal firearms should be prosecuted as involuntary manslaughter, as conspiracy to commit murder and so on whenever a weapon used in a shooting can be traced to its seller.

This seems something that the National Rifle Association could get behind since its spokesmen are so quick to explain most murders are committed by criminals with illegal, unlicensed firearms. Instead of going berserk and responding as though any form of gun control is but one more step toward disarming the citizenry, the NRA should clarify its position on illegally purchased firearms.

Though it may sound like a marriage made in purgatory, I think the NRA could eventually be persuaded to back legislation focused solely on the gun runners of America who supply the majority of firearms used in robberies, murders and stickups.

While the group takes the right to bear arms quite seriously, I doubt that NRA members believe their rights should include the sale of illegal firearms to the many youths who were arrested with such weapons last year in New York City. There, more than 1,000 kids - one-third of those 17 or younger - are arrested for carrying a gun each year.

According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 4,043 illegal guns were confiscated in the city last year.

I cannot imagine the members of the NRA cheering whenever they see television news about another murderous run made by some loon who bought his guns on the black market. Or laughing as they study the amount of corpses stacked up yearly in almost every urban area in America…