AMERICA AT LARGE:RONNY VARGAS was a precocious teenager from the Bronx with three New York Golden Gloves titles to his credit. His amateur exploits had attracted the attention of Pat Lynch, who had managed Arturo Gatti for much of his career.

Lynch signed Vargas to a contract and last September put him in against a hapless light-middleweight from Michigan named Ricky Dew on a club fight card down on Wall Street. I was there that night, and what I remember most vividly was that Dew's cornermen hadn't even made it down the stairs when their guy hit the floor.

Including the time it took referee Sparkle Lee to count Dew out, Vargas's pro debut had lasted all of 20 seconds.

Three weeks later he was back in action, and won all four rounds of his supporting bout against Bruce Burkhart on the Kelly Pavlik-Jermain Taylor card in Atlantic City.

When he fought Brian Mullis on the Miguel Cotto-Shane Mosley card at Madison Square Garden last November, the bout wasn't three rounds old when Mullis's cornermen climbed up the stairs waving a white towel in a gesture of surrender. And this past April when Alfonso Gomez ended Gatti's career in Atlantic City, Vargas once again had a featured role on the undercard and stopped Roberto Iririzarry in three.

I'd seen him fight only on those four occasions, but in all he had fought eight times in less than 11 months and won all of them, the last another third-round stoppage on a boxing show in New Jersey three weeks ago.

Like Ronny Vargas, Roshii Wells was 19 when he made his professional debut. He had still been a student at Riverdale High School when he won a bronze medal at the 1996 Atlanta Games. A member of the US Olympic team that included future champions Floyd Mayweather, Antonio Tarver, Fernando Vargas and David Reid that year, Wells won his first three bouts before losing to the eventual gold medallist, Ariel Hernandez of Cuba, in the semi-final.

He turned pro a year later, and was undefeated when he challenged the Mexican Alex Terra Garcia for the WBA light-middleweight title at the Mohegan Sun in Connecticut five years ago. Boxing on the undercard of the Chris Byrd-Fres Oquendo heavyweight title fight, Wells was leading on all three scorecards after nine, but he was dropped in the 10th and seemed so woozy in the corner that referee Frank Cappuccino didn't let him come out for the 11th.

In 2004 in Las Vegas, Wells beat Roberto Duran's nephew Santiago Samaniego to earn another crack at Terra Garcia, but when they met in Chicago three years ago he was once again stopped, and he never fought again.

At 3am last Saturday night, Ronny Vargas was cruising around the Bronx with some friends when they dropped into an all-night bodega on Clinton Street. There they encountered two men and two young women, one of whom appears to have initiated a conversation with Vargas, to the evident displeasure of her companions.

While there were heated exchanges of words, no serious punches were thrown before the two groups were separated and sent on their respective ways.

Vargas got back in his car with his friends, and had driven but a short distance when two cars cut him off and forced his Honda Accord to the side of the road. One of the principals from the earlier disagreement jumped out, produced a pistol, and shot him through the chest before speeding away in a white sedan.

An ambulance was summoned, but Ronny Vargas was pronounced dead by the time he reached the hospital. He was 20 years old.

Just a few nights earlier in Las Vegas, Roshii Wells had been involved in an argument with a man described as an acquaintance. The latter threatened to return, and in the wee hours of the morning he did, this time packing heat. He shot Wells twice through the chest, killing him.

A few days later Arizona police arrested 26-year-old Roger Randolph and charged him with Wells's murder. No arrests have yet been made in connection Ronny Vargas's death.

That the testosterone is going to bubble over when young men congregate is hardly an American phenomenon, but the frequency with which firearms are used to resolve these disputes would seem to mark us as unique among supposedly civilised societies.

An obvious first step would seem to be addressing the frightening availability of lethal weapons on American streets, but the entrenched gun-owning lobby represents a powerful force to the whims of which even otherwise rational politicians find themselves forced to kowtow.

It probably wouldn't surprise you to learn that John McCain's position on the issue (as enunciated on his campaign website) is that the Arizona senator "believes that the right of law abiding citizens to keep and bear arms is a fundamental, individual Constitutional right . . . Gun control is a proven failure in fighting crime. Law abiding citizens should not be asked to give up their rights because of criminals - criminals who ignore gun control laws anyway."

You might also suppose McCain's history of consistently voting against legislation to ban the ownership of assault rifles by ordinary citizens and his voting record of opposition to bans on the importation and manufacture of armour-piercing ammunition would have mollified the right wing, but back in 2001, when he lent his voice to a tepid proposal requiring background checks for those seeking to purchase automatic weapons at otherwise unregulated gun shows, he was the target of an NRA-inspired recall petition, one that accused him of abetting "dishonest and treasonous" legislation.

You might also suppose that since his opponent is a virtual lapdog for the firearms industry, Barack Obama would have the opportunity to stake out a position on the side of sanity, but in fact, the presumptive Democratic nominee is no more eager than McCain to tangle with the gun nuts.

Senator Obama's official position is that "as a general principle, I believe that the Constitution confers an individual the right to bear arms. I have no intention of taking away folks' guns."

The gun nuts are fond of saying "guns don't kill people; people kill people", but the specious logic of that philosophy should be self-evident, even to a politician.

Young Vargas was waked in the Bronx on Tuesday and Wednesday and will be buried this morning.

A grieving Pat Lynch said, "I truly believe the kid had all the talent in the world to be a world champion," and he may have been right about that, but that is not the point.

The point is that nobody should have to bury a 20-year-old kid, and a 31-year-old ex-boxer should by rights have a long and productive life ahead of him.

If their killers hadn't had such ready access to deadly weapons, both Ronny Vargas and Roshii Wells might be alive today.