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The mayhem has spawned another group, MAD DADS, which stands for Men Against Destruction -- Defending Against Drugs and Social Disorder. They start praying about 10 o'clock every Friday night, just before they hit the streets armed with two-way radios, police scanners, video cameras and a gutsy determination to stop kids from shooting one another. Seven men and two women bow their heads around a small table in the one-story, cinder-block command center in a rough part of town, hoping for peace, or at least enough rain to keep kids off the streets for one more night. "The hour is getting late, and our children need us," says John Foster, a vice president of the city employees union, who founded the group four years ago after his son was badly beaten. The prayer is interrupted by the sound of a gunshot, followed shortly by the wail of an ambulance. Foster shakes his head. "It's becoming so common," he says. "Some of our young people are turning into cold-blooded killers."
Two weeks later, as Foster patrols the largely black, working-class neighborhoods in north Omaha, a gunshot crackles through the air. Foster turns the corner. A mother and three children run toward his car. "Some kids are shooting at people just down the street there," says the woman, pointing nervously. Foster circles the block, slowing as he approaches a pack of kids mingling in front of a house. "We were just having a party, a birthday party," says one, "when these guys drive by and start shooting at us." Twenty minutes later and only blocks away, Foster comes upon a teenage boy being treated by an ambulance team for a gunshot wound in the arm. "It's so sad," he says. "I remember when you could settle things with fisticuffs. Man, that's antiquated now."
The MAD DADS sponsored two gun-buyback programs last winter, offering up to $50 for a working weapon, with no questions asked. On both days, they ran out of money within half an hour. Total haul: 588 guns, some turned in by juveniles. "It amazed me," says C.R. Bell, president of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. In May MAD DADS staged another buyback after sending 100,000 flyers to nine school districts. The take: 1,124 guns, which will be welded into a monument by a local artist. Among them was Doug's 12-gauge shotgun. "I figured it was a safe way to get rid of it," Doug says. "I did a lot of crazy things with that gun, and I didn't want to get caught with it." He plans on getting a handgun next.
The birds disappeared from Tony's neighborhood in central Omaha when he was in the fourth grade, shortly after he got his first BB gun. "I guess I shot a lot of animals," he says sheepishly. Now he totes a sawed-off, 20-gauge, pump-action shotgun he bought for $20 last January from a 16-year-old friend. "The grip was broken, so I got a good price," the 17-year-old says proudly. He doesn't shoot birds anymore, but he fires an occasional salvo into the night sky around Omaha. "Sometimes I just feel like busting it, you know. I just want to pull the trigger and bam!"