Let's bring back fistfights.

When I was a kid growing up in small-town Texas, guys used to face off and slug it out. They weren't very skilled -- lots of hay-makers thrown more or less at some other guy's face -- but once it was over, they usually made up and decided that whatever their beef was with each other was settled. Often they even became friends. The worst injury I ever saw, besides a bloody nose, was a broken jaw, and the guy who administered it showed up later at the hospital with flowers (at the insistence of his girlfriend). Guys pummeled each other, over all kinds of disagreements, but nobody got seriously hurt.

But something happened somewhere along the way. Guys got guns. Not just grown-up guys but teenagers. And arguments over turf or girlfriends became lethal. Whoa! Maybe it started in the big cities, where life and death is more pronounced than in the heartland, but it's spread. A promising couple of black college grads were gunned to death at an intersection in Denver a few years ago, allegedly by someone who thought his eventual victim had witnessed him shooting someone in a Denver park. (The dead girl was just in the car at the time. They were to be married soon.)

Two young lives snuffed out in a few seconds. Bang bang bang!

The guy who was arrested was no older than the couple he shot to death, in his twenties. Now he's facing life in prison. And his victims are dead.

Why couldn't he have settled his quarrel with his rival with an old-fashioned fistfight? Why the gun?

Let's ressurect the fistfight, okay? Two guys going at it in some parking lot, with friends and foes looking on, cheering for one or the other, maybe even putting money down on the outcome. I am not at all in favor of anyone hitting anyone else -- it hurts! -- but it did used to solve disputes without anyone being killed.

There's a great old video that shows the leaders of America and the USSR, both middle-aged guys, having a fistfight. It's painful to watch: two older guys punching each other over and over. In the end, they're both spent, as they should be. And nothing has been resolved.

But no one was killed, and no nuclear devices were detonated.

The famous Western movie "Shane" has a fight scene that defines others to come. If you haven't seen it, you should. Ouch!

Maybe it's time to get back to those old days when guys faced off, for their honor or whatever, and just hit each other instead of shooting each other. The punk is the one who can't face a foe in a fistfight but has to pull out his pistol. Shame on him!

You think you're tough? Okay, go face to face with your opponent. Keep your gun in your baggy pants. Anyone can shoot anyone. Can you face your opponent man-to-man? Just you and him?

It's well-known that many of today's best boxers came from under-privileged neighborhoods. Mike Tyson, the most feared boxer of our time, came from a place where he had to defend himself every day. He found an old guy, Gus Damato, who tried to teach him not just to fight but to be a better person. Unfortunately, Gus died, and Mike became again a punk. It happens to kids in lots of neighborhoods every day.

Let's train more of our young men to stand up for themselves, in the gyms where older men know what it was like to grow up there and can help them develop skills that will benefit them not just in the ring but later in life. Some of those old boxers, well past their primes, have lessons to teach young toughs. And young sissies, too. They're very smart men, but also very tough, and, in their old age, easy-going. They've seen it all. Bring it on, young stud! You have the instinct, but I can show you skills and techniques. Or may you're afraid of guys who threaten to beat you up. I can show you how to defend yourself and avoid all those life-long traumas. If you're confident of your stance and your reflexes -- which I can teach you -- a stiff jab to the eye will discourage almost any bully. And you'll know what to do next. When we're done, you won't need guns.

Should we teach all our young boys how to box? Probably not. But if they're growing up in cities and parts of cities where it's required -- just to hold your head up in your neighborhood -- then I say yes. As I said before, if you know how to drive a left jab into a thug's eye -- something he's not expecting -- and follow it up with a right to his jaw, he's going to be thrown off-balance, at the least. If you want to stick around -- if he's reeling -- and follow it up with a right to his temple, you'll likely knock him out. And this applies to girls as well as guys. A sharp punch to the side of the head, up high, just above the ear, knocks almost anyone out. Remember it the next time you're mugged, okay? Put your left fist in his face to distract him, then follow it with your right fist to anywhere on his face, then hit him on the side of his head, and he'll go down.

Then run like hell!

The old one-two followed by a killing blow to the temple. Basic boxing skills. It's any boxer's dream to deliver just those blows, in that order.

The simple truth is that young men are always going to be physical and even brutal. The male of the species is bred that way. It's up to the females, the smart ones, to tame their mates, to bring them back into the mainstream. It can be done, and often is, but it's easier when the males are older and tired of fighting. Pick a young one, and you may have more fights on your hand than you bargained for. On the other hand, you may be able to train a young stud to be gentle and responsible. Toss the coin, no?

But, in any case, let's put away our guns and bring back the fistfight. It used to be the chosen venue for settling differences, and it could be again. It can be brutal, for sure -- guys hitting each other as hard as they can isn't pretty-- but no one dies.

How often does that happen in drive-by shootings?

Let's bring back the gladiator spirit and make it personal again: face off against each other. If you think your adversary is the better man, so be it. Don't fight him. If you do fight him, do it fairly.

But don't punk out and shoot him.

That's not the way real men settle their differences.