Is America one community or a collection of self-absorbed communities? Are we concerned about all our citizens, or just the ones whom we believe are "like us"? This is a key question in the gun violence prevention debate, because it appears that many NRA gun owners limit their compassion and sense of responsibility.

We are not involved in electoral politics on GunGuys.com, but we read with interest Senator Barack Obama's recent speech that touched upon this key issue. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert covered Obama's remarks in a recent column:

He said in his speech that he will keep fighting in Washington for more money and more programs. “But that money and those programs,” he said, “will not make any difference unless we have a change of heart.”

He also noted that there was tremendous grief across the country when the massacre at Virginia Tech happened last April, “and rightfully so.” But with 34 school kids dead in Chicago since the beginning of the last school year, he said, “for the most part, there has been silence.”

It’s important, he said, that Americans reach a mind-set in which “we care just as much” about the children slain in Chicago as those killed at Virginia Tech.

Are we a unified nation, or a country of islands of self-interest?

Are the lives of Black or Latino children in urban settings valued as much as White youth in the suburbs?

The answer, of course, is "no" as far as the media and our government are concerned.

Herbert writes:

Over the past school year, Mr. Obama said, the number of public school students killed in Chicago was higher than the number of soldiers from the entire state of Illinois who were killed in Iraq during that period.

Of course, White kids are shot too -- in suicides, accidents and homicides -- and adult murder-suicides and homicides are daily splashed across the newspapers. But it is readily apparent that the shooting of a suburban White student gets a whole lot more media coverage than minority youth.

It's explosive to talk about race and guns, but it's even more dishonest not to.

Last year we saw a movie called "The Girl in the Cafe." Without trying to explain the entire film, suffice it to say that there is a dramatic moment when a potential romantic interest asks her what she did in the past few years. The young woman responds that she was in prison because she accidentally killed a man who was trying to seriously harm a child. "Was it your child?" her companion asks. "Does it matter?" she responds.

Indeed, the death of any American child by gunfire is a loss to the American community. It shouldn't matter whether it is our child or a child dying anywhere in the nation.

If we are a national family, we need to be responsible as a country for the health and safety of youth, regardless of their race, class or economic background.