I remember when then-Oakland City Manager made curbs on the sale of guns in Oakland a major priority; then Mayor and now AG Jerry Brown fired him. Since then, Oakland's taken its collective eye off the ball of controlling gun sales. And the lack of attention has been so severe that it's led to this article in today's Oakland Tribune :
OAKLAND — Seventeen-year-old Dominique Nubie stood on a West Oakland street corner talking about what matters in his life.
"Guns "... everybody here has guns," he said, motioning around.
Instead of the usual high school concerns about finishing homework or making the basketball team, Dominique worries most about survival in a neighborhood where many of his peers own guns.
Oakland is teeming with guns. They're easy to buy, easy to steal and seen by some young men as a necessary possession in certain Oakland neighborhoods where to be unarmed means to be vulnerable.
"If I got a gun, I feel like I can't be touched, like I'm the man," said one 18-year-old who said he never shot a gun, but has held one.
According to Oakland Police Department statistics, about 90 percent of last year's 127 homicides were caused by gunfire. The department confiscated 1,241 guns connected to crimes last year, but the number confiscated "is a small fraction" of the number of guns out there, said Sgt. Kevin Kaney of the department's weapons unit. He would not provide an estimate of the total number of guns in Oakland, but said there are "tens of thousands."
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