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As our country celebrated its annual commemoration of freedom from tyranny this July, I couldn't help thinking about five middle-aged grandmothers I know. I met them when I first became New Haven's police chief. They wanted to talk about freedom, specifically about the lack of freedom, because of guns.

I thought about them this July because of one of those curious confluences of transatlantic history. In Great Britain, Parliament was banning all handguns. It had seen enough civilian massacres. The public overwhelmingly supported the ban.

Meanwhile, here on our shores -- in a nation founded on a declaration against British tyranny -- our Supreme Court was dismantling the one mild attempt at gun control that our gun-lobby-engorged Congress has been able to pass, the Brady Bill.

Apparently even a brief delay in selling people guns so we can keep them out of the hands of deadly nuts is considered too much of a "threat" to freedom. Meanwhile, we have 200 million guns keeping Americans prisoners in their own homes. We have more than 35,000 gun-related deaths a year. And that's just deaths. That doesn't begin to count the spinal, brain and other traumatic injuries that make people vegetables or confine them to wheelchairs for the rest of their lives.

The five middle-aged grandmothers were American prisoners of the gun. They live in a section of New Haven called Newhallville, a working class African American neighborhood. I met them in 1990 while walking the neighborhood to introduce and reintroduce myself to people. They came to my office on a subsequent day and told me how they were bringing up their grandchildren. The five of them fought back tears as they described huddling with their grandchildren behind stoves, cuddling with them in bathtubs, to avoid bullets that were randomly flying through their windows.

New Haven, like other American cities, had seen its various poverty-related problems become deadly thanks to the handgun. Kids were carrying guns around because they felt they had to, either to be cool, or just to keep safe. "I've got to get a gun because he's got a gun." That was the thinking.

The results for the cops: They requested, understandably, more firepower to keep up with the Uzis on the street. Understandably, they wanted to wear bullet-proof vests. It was an arms race played out on a neighborhood, rather than a superpower stage. The vest may make a cop safer for a day, but it unfortunately becomes another step in arming ourselves for war rather than moving toward peace.

This Independence Day I was fortunate enough to be invited to a block party in Newhallville, on Pond Street. The guns don't imprison people there these days. Instead, the people have planted flowers. Seriously. The neighbors started planting flowers on their properties and getting to know each other in the process. They got kids involved. They unified, and worked with police to provide information on trouble-makers. Rather than arming themselves to shoot intruders, they used seeds, unity and cooperation. Each July 4th, they have a contest for best flower plantings and loads of fun and games for the kids.

While violence remains a real problem in Newhallville, and in all American cities, crime is also down. Gun violence, in particular, is down. New Haven's cops, working with people like the grandmothers who came to see me, like the neighbors on Pond Street, found that the old strategy of naked force only begets violence. It didn't cut it down.

Instead of guns, cops used their intelligence, through information-gathering, to bust gangs. They talk trust with the law-abiding majority of citizens. They even built respect from the non-law abiding citizens whom they ended up disarming. Neighbors formed a management team to work together on not just police issues, but neighborhood renewal.

We've learned that police can't go it alone with guns. We have to communicate. Even when a cop has no choice but to use a gun, that gunshot still traumatizes the cops involved and the community. It is hardly a long-term solution.