By James W. Dolan

I was always suspicious that the sharp decline in murders and violent crimes in the city that occurred during the 1992 through 2002 was more the result of demographics than anything else.

That is not to say the police, district attorney's office, probation, community activists and clergy with the support of federal authorities did not make an important contribution to what was called "The Boston Miracle."

Other cities looked to Boston for help in controlling their rising murder rates. We were the example of how law enforcement and the community could work to reduce neighborhood violence.

Regrettably the youth violence and murders that seemed to peak in the late '80s and then subsided during the mid and late '90s are on the rise. The four horsemen of gangs, guns, drugs, and turf are again loose in the city. They bring their own homegrown brand of terrorism into the neighborhoods.

More often than not the victims of both the violence and terror are minority youth. Unfortunately the problem tends to be viewed by many as distant, urban - them not us. Were that level of violence to occur in the suburbs instead of city neighborhoods there would be a huge public outcry.

So long as it is contained within certain neighborhoods and so long as the victims are poor, disadvantaged minorities, the problem fails to get the public attention it deserves. Even though domestic, urban terrorists kill more people than Islamic radicals, national attention and resources are applied to international terrorism because that violence is indiscriminate. It puts everyone at risk.

America should be ashamed at the level of violence it not only tolerates but promotes in a culture where sex, violence, mayhem, selfishness and irresponsibility are often glorified. As hard as they try, law enforcement officials are always on the defensive against those forces that elevate self-gratification over social responsibility.

Dedicated police officers and prosecutors know full well they deal only with symptoms. Efforts mounted over the years to address "root causes" have been a dismal failure. The most obvious being gun control. Give a kid with few opportunities, who is jacked up on what now passes for music, entertainment and celebrity, access to a gun and you have the makings of an urban terrorist.

On mean city streets status, money and guns are power and the easiest to access are guns. A gun-crazed nation cannot really be serious about controlling youth violence without first effectively controlling the preferred instrument for murder on our city streets.

While murder rates will ebb and flow depending upon demographics and the number of youthful predators who have been locked up, the conditions that drive that frightful statistic remain the same. We will spend billions and sacrifice our young people in a questionable effort to suppress international terrorism and at the same time all but ignore the body count at home.

Perhaps because most urban murders are one at a time and so often involve the poor and dispossessed they don't seem to register despite the fact that the annual death toll from domestic terrorists far exceeds that inflicted by their foreign counterparts. Despite the terrible costs, it is easier to unite the country against enemies foreign rather than domestic. Sad to say killing foreign terrorists may be more achievable than changing those conditions so ingrained in our culture that give rise to this country's terrible homicide rate.

In looking at the enemy within, we would have to acknowledge our own weaknesses, failings and mistakes. We would have to address problems that so far seem intractable. Many appear to be part of our national character

Facing oneself honestly as an individual or a nation is difficult. Applying that national self-awareness in a concerted effort to improve is even harder since there are so many contending forces that have a stake in maintaining the status quo. The trend over the last 50 years has not been encouraging.

We have become the most violent nation on the globe. While defending our borders against foreign intruders intent on doing us arm, as a nation we should now and then glance over our shoulder at the harm we do to ourselves.

(James W. Dolan is a retired Dorchester District Court judge who now practices law at Dolan, Connly & Flaherty, 50 Redfield St., Dorchester: jdolan@dolanconnly.com)