As part of its reporting on this incident, The Post printed a story on Dr. Robert Kurtz, a gunshot trauma expert, and another on Kimberly Hill, who lost her 8-year-old son to a stray bullet. Both blamed the availability of guns.

Some Post letter-writers supporting gun rights were unjustifiably hard on Kurtz, a man whose daily involvement in treating the horrific effects of firearms misuse makes objectivity not only difficult, but perhaps too much to ask.

Bats and knives can indeed kill, but with nowhere near the same ease and detachment as guns. NRA spokespeople are fond of saying, "Guns don't kill people. People do"; quite true — yet the presence of guns can make shootings more likely, especially in a cultural matrix already soaked with violence.

This is the issue that nobody is willing to confront. And while we dither, those who kill police officers and children on our streets, those who ignore gun laws and every other law and convention of civilized society, continue their depredations.

Ms. Hill, after blaming gun availability for her son's death, actually said that she had no animosity towards two of the young neighborhood men whom she knew to be involved in the wild gunfire exchange that took her son's life. It is hard to criticize an attitude that may bring this poor woman some peace — but the fact remains that her anger is misplaced. Ignoring, tolerating or even rationalizing the cultural factors will only result in further senseless violence. We must develop the maturity to confront this issue in a more effective (yet also more difficult) manner than surrendering important rights.

All of our rights can have dreadful consequences. Including those mandating jury trials, search warrants, probable cause for arrests, and face-to-face testimony —all sometimes allow dirtbags who belong in jail to walk the streets. Not to mention the rights of a significant number of "hip hop" artists — whose freedom of expression, attitudes and lifestyles do a lot more to create a cynical culture of violence among young people than the NRA or any gun company.

All civil liberties involve social cost. But the cost is lower than that of their absence, which would expose us all to organized oppression, both criminal and official, much worse than random street crime. And the costs of such liberties diminish appreciably in societies that demand personal responsibility and conformity to the rules of civilized behavior.

In recent years, 38 states have adopted "right to carry" laws, requiring police to issue full-carry pistol permits to all who meet simple criteria such as lack of a felony record. Despite the dire predictions of prominent Chicken Littles, most of these states actually saw drops in crime.

A society that wishes to remain democratic can never allow the behavior of the antisocial to determine the boundaries of its rights. Doing so can undermine the free society that Officer Stewart and others like him gave their lives to defend.

Marc Russo is a practicing attorney and former Assistant District Attorney for Kings County.