I GOTTA GUN. DISRESPECT ME AND I'LL KILL YOU.

Twenty years ago, two guys got into an argument on a corner in Philadelphia. One shoved. The other shoved back. Pretty soon a bunch of fists were flying, and the fight attracted a big crowd. Ten years ago, the same thing happened, but ended up in a bloody knife fight, still attracting a big crowd. This year two guys got into a beef on the same corner in Philly and, before a man could snort a line, a gun was pulled, shots were fired, and a man was killed, with people scattering in panic.

It isn't just Philadelphia. Except for Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, street murder-by-gun is going up, fast. And it isn't drug dealers fighting over turf. It isn't gang warfare. It isn't the mob. It isn't any of the usual suspects.

Instead, it's friends and acquaintances getting into beefs and taking each other out.

In one town, two women argued over a dress. Bang! And one was soon dead. In another town, a young guy eyes a chick too obviously. Bang! Her boyfriend drills the would-be Lothario. A guy walking down a street makes eye contact with a teen walking toward him. Bang! The teen sticks his smoking pistol back in his belt.

What's happening here?

It seems the poor are bumping each other off. Especially boys in their teens and men in their twenties. Young people who have dropped out of school. Young people who can't find jobs. Young people who have convictions on their records. Young people who have been rejected by society. Young people who have lost everything but their self-respect.

Living on the raw edge of despair, they desperately husband and protect their "respect." Arrested killers frequently explain to the police, "I shot him because he disrespected me." To these young people, losing "respect" means leaving them with absolutely nothing, as in nothing with living for. And so the desperate young will kill anyone who attempts to attack their pride by "disrespecting."

And, as is true of everything else, attacking disrespectors has been globalized.

In this America, the disrespected are young blacks. In France, they are the Muslim youth. In Denmark, they are the Muslim poor. In Egypt, they are called "the Moslem Brotherhood." In Saudi Arabia, they are the extremists, the Wahhabi. In the Philippines, they are the rebels of Mindanao who have fought Philippine governments since the days of Spanish rule. In Iraq, they are the wielders of swords over the necks of kidnapped westerners. In Palestine, they are the suicide bombers.

Potential killers and terrorists are the same the world over. They are extremely easy to profile, all having six basic characteristics:

1. They are young, generally under thirty.

2. They are in the underclass of their society. (Some are middle class who have come to identify with the underclass and its plight.)

3. They have lost all hope of a better life.

4. They join groups which give them respect and power.

5. They do not fear death and have little regard for human life.

6. They have ready access to weapons and explosives, including kitchen matches, which are used in France to convert automobile gas tanks into firebombs.

Is the Arab suicide bomber all that much different from the African-American teen who says, "I want to get mine, live fast, and leave a great-looking corpse by thirty?"

The long-term solution is obvious: Opportunity. Equal economic opportunity. Something that does not now exist anywhere in the world for the underclasses. In the USA, almost 20% of the population subsists under the poverty line while the upper 7% owns more than 50 percent of the nation's wealth.

In the short run, we can all modify our behavior so as to avoid disrespecting the highly volatile members of the underclasses.

One should not use cartoons to disrespect Muslims or Muhammad. Denmark should have known better.

One should not preach "Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité" while looking down long, curving Gallic noses at the Muslim poor. France should have known better.

One should not segregate the poor into ghettos and pass drug laws which penalize black youth twice as heavily as white youth. America should have learned better by now.

It is easy for limousine liberals and flag-waving conservatives to defend the kinds of free speech which disrespect people. But it's very dangerous when the disrespect is aimed at people who have nothing left but their respect.