So far, the buzz in Congress about the juvenile justice bill passed by the Senate last week has focused upon the politics. How Vice President Gore won by breaking to 50-50 tie on background checks at gun show sales. How Republican leadership lost by severely miscalculating the effects of Columbine and Conyers. How the GOP can make up with its embarrassed NRA friends when the bill reaches the House. How Democrats can continue to shield their shameless Hollywood friends from scrutiny.

Eventually, maybe Congress will get around to talking about juvenile justice.

As gun control, the bill makes a few modest, common sense changes that will not infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of law-abiders. At the same time, it leaves enough loopholes to appease the criminal element.

As legislation to break the cycle of teen violence, it tries to do everything and so likely will do nothing. It doesn’t even know what kind of violence it wants to stop.

The immediate crisis is school massacres, yet the key elements of the bill — prosecuting juveniles as adults, public disclosure of juvenile records, funding for boot camps — address street crime. The two could hardly be more different.

Street crime is urban, minority, poor. It’s about turf, respect and lengthy rap sheets. It’s the crime of Capone and Gotti. School massacres are suburban, white, affluent. It’s about alienation, seething anger and who knows what else.

Street-crime kids are seen as troublemakers. Kids who slaughter their classmates are seen as troubled. Congress has no hope of making even a dent in either problem until it recognizes the difference.

Clearly that has yet to happen. The point was raised several times in the Senate debate that black kids who commit crimes against people are six times more likely to be jailed that a white kid who committed the same crime. For property crimes, it’s four times. An amendment to tie federal grants for prevention and enforcement programs (the bill makes $1 billion available) to efforts to eliminate this racial bias went nowhere.

Likewise, the bill gives federal prosecutors greater leeway in trying kids ages 14 and up as adults, with only vague guarantees that this power will be used sparingly and that kids will not be locked up with predatory adults. Years of solid evidence that kids in adult facilities, no matter how well supervised and segregated, will either be raped, murdered or turned into professional criminals was brushed aside.

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott has taken a lot of heat for the Republican gun-control humiliation. To his credit, he admits he miscalculated public sentiment. He correctly criticizes Democrats for their cozy, uncritical relationship with the entertainment industry. Just as Democrats criticize Republicans for their cozy, uncritical relationship with the gun industry. Even in times of the gravest national crisis, the bond between public policy and campaign finance is strong.

Street crime is down substantially because the economy is booming and prosperity is a great cure for poverty. School massacres are up. The question is why. This crime bill provides no answers.