It's a sad commentary about Kansas City when children have to march in the streets in a plea for their own safety.

It happened last week when dozens of children set out along Linwood Boulevard, urging an end to the violence that too often claims the lives of young innocents.

The Star reported that most of the marchers were from the Freedom School at Jamison Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. They carried signs that said "Stop the violence in our neighborhood" and "Put guns down."

And "Protect the children...."

Their demonstration followed the June 30 shootings at Linwood and Indiana Avenue that left a 2-year-old girl critically injured and sent a 15-year-old girl to the hospital. A 15-year-old boy, who said he was not the shooter, has surrendered to police, who allege he was responsible.

The older victim, who was treated and released, was leaving summer school when she was hit. The 2-year-old was riding in the back seat of a car.

Both were bystanders caught in the violence that David Bryant, a site coordinator for the Freedom School, observed is all too frequent.

"The children in our neighborhood witness violent acts on a daily basis," he said.

Violence takes many forms, but often guns are the weapons used to settle a dispute or even a score. Indeed, Kansas City police are investigating whether the latest gunfire is related to 10 other shootings that go back to last fall.

Children are the casualties, intended and unintended, of the use of guns.

The potential harm to children is one reason why most Kansas City urban legislators did not vote in favor of the concealed handgun bill that the General Assembly passed in early May. These lawmakers say that being able to hide guns from view will not make the neighborhoods safer, but less so.

Most suburban lawmakers voted in favor of the bill, citing their constituents' desires to be better able to protect themselves from criminals.

Criminals will be less likely to attack law-abiding citizens, they say, if they are not sure who might be armed and able to fire back.

That misguided argument thankfully did not persuade Gov. Bob Holden, who, on the day before the Fourth of July, vetoed the bill, as he promised he would.

The regular violence that envelops children was one of the reasons for Holden's brave veto. The governor said guns would be more available to children if the bill became law.

His veto may be overridden by lawmakers when they return to work in a September special session. If that happens, legislators won't be thinking of what's good for the children when they cast their override votes.

In 2001, more than 22 percent of the 365 teenagers who died violently in Missouri lost their lives because of homicides, according to Citizens for Missouri's Children/Children's Trust Fund data found in the 2002 Kids Count report.

And Kansas had 135 teen violent deaths that year, according to Kansas Action for Children in its Kids Count report.

While acknowledging that most violent deaths of teenagers in the two states are the result of automobile accidents, the reports also observed that guns play a particular role.

Firearms cause one in every four teen deaths, the Kansas report said.

In Missouri, minority youths were most likely to be the victims of homicides, not car accidents.

Both reports offered suggestions for protecting young people from violent acts. (The reports are found on the Web sites www.mokids.org and www.kac.org.)

Those ideas include instituting community- or school-based crime prevention programs that address substance abuse, anger management, gun control, gang violence and community policing, and limiting easy access to guns and other weapons in the home. They also include conflict resolution training, mentoring, positive adult role models and improving parenting skills.

Neither report suggested allowing concealed guns to protect young people from the violence in their homes and neighborhoods. Wonder why.