Tracing the life of a gun

The Violence Policy Center in Washington DC released a study, this week, called “Lost Youth”. It found that homicide is the leading cause of death for African Americans aged 10 to 24 in California. And young African Americans are more than 14 times more likely to be murdered than young whites. 

Alameda County ranksnumber two – behind Monterey – with more than 20 youth murders per 100,000 residents. And most Alameda County murders happen in Oakland.

According to the Oakland Police Department, the deadliest hours are between eight at night and four in the morning. And more than two-thirds of last year's 95 homicides involved handguns. It's a paradox: young men carry guns around for protection, yet those very guns are what keep the killing rate so high.

As part of our Oakland Fault Lines Project, which looks at the causes and solutions to violence, reporter Sarah Gonzalez went out to deep East Oakland to learn more about guns in the community. She started with the beginning of a gun’s life on the streets: the purchase.

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SARAH GONZALEZ: When I started looking to purchase a gun on the street, I thought it might be kind of difficult. So I just started asking around.

GONZALEZ: So, like if I just wanted to buy a gun, where would I get one?

CHEECH MAC: You’d have to cut that microphone off then I could show you. (laughs)

That might sound like a joke, but it really was that simple for me. Even as an outsider, finding a gun in this part of East Oakland took minutes.

I met a guy who goes by the name of Cheech Mac, outside of a house on 92nd Avenue. He’s the 41-year-old who offered to sell me the gun, but he isn’t really a gun dealer. Like many others from here, he just owns some guns. And as he discusses with his friend, he’ll sell them for the right price.

MAC: I selled it to a killer. He gonna kill somebody, he gonna kill somebody anyway, ya feel me? I’ma get my money! (laughs)

It seems shocking to talk so indifferently about murder. From the outside looking in, it’s hard to understand. Mac grew up in the 69 Village Housing Project, in what residents call Deep East Oakland. He bought his first firearm illegally at age 15, right after he first saw a murder.

MAC: Somebody got killed in front of me, fell on the ground. I was in shock. So when I looked up, the whole crowd was gone, I was the last one left so I left too.

More than a third of Oakland’s homicides last year occurred in Mac’s neighborhood of the Deep East. Most residents have had guns pulled out on them by a neighbor or by the Oakland Police Department. They’ve seen guns protect, and they’ve seen guns kill. Young black males between the ages of 18 and 35 are overwhelmingly the victims and perpetrators of gun-related homicides.

But the statistics don’t tell the whole story. Gun violence at one point or another affects everyone in this neighborhood.

WOMAN: It’s better to have loved and lost, or something?...

In a crowded room in downtown Oakland, a group of young women are eating sandwiches and having a discussion about love and love lost. Together they form a support group through an organization called Leadership Excellence. Each week, they meet to discuss issues they face in their community – issues like gun violence.

NAYOA BLACK: It was like a parade in East Oakland, and there was a lotta traffic, so the cars were going really slow. And this van hit the corner and opened up the door, and it was like three rifles and they was just shootin’. And the guy they was shootin’ at was right behind me...

Nayoa Black is a petite and animated 15-year-old from East Oakland. She casually relives the day when she was caught in a drive-by shooting.

BLACK: I wasn’t scared because I just knew I was gonna die, so I just like, “Well, one of these bullets is gonna hit me, and it’s probably not gonna hurt, I’m probably just gonna get took out.” That’s how I was feeling at that point. I just like, “Well, okay.”

Because residents have grown up with a constant threat of death, many say they’re not really afraid of what can happen to them in their neighborhoods.

ANJANETTE MASTERS: I guess I feel comfortable because I was actually raised around all the stuff that people are scared of.

Anjanette Masters is a 17-year-old from the Deep East. As she talks to her peers about getting held-up for her cell phone, she seems to have that same proud fearlessness as a lot of the young men from her neighborhood.

MASTERS: I’m not about to give nothin’ up, even if you gotta gun, even if you gonna shoot me or you not. I’m about to give you shit.

There’s a lot of bravado here. A lot of people in East Oakland say they aren’t afraid to shoot, or to die. But Oakland resident Jakada Imani says there’s something deeper going on. People are actually afraid.

JAKADA IMANI: There’s a culture, or in reality, where folks in Oakland don’t feel safe.

Imani is the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland. He says guns became commonplace here because residents don’t feel they’re protected by the criminal justice system.

TAY P.Z.: Entry wound and exit wound. Bam – broke all this, this a metal plate right here.

Tay P.Z. is a 25-year-old from Deep East Oakland. He pulls up his sleeve to show a large scar on his forearm.

P.Z.: ...nobody wasn’t lookin’ for me. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s ugly out here, and I caught a stray bullet.

The person who shot P.Z. got away with it. Residents here say this happens all too often, and a lot of the time, people are even getting away with murder. It’s faults in the system like this that cause people to take loss into their own hands, feeding the demand for guns on the street.

JEFF BAKER: I mean, I think that’s why we have a constant flow of gun violence, because there’s this neverending supply of weaponry.

Jeff Baker is the assistant to the city administrator. He oversees the funds for Measure Y, Oakland’s violence prevention initiative. Baker says, in order to rid the community of guns, you have to stop them at their source.

BAKER: I’m not sure who the sales persons are, but I’m pretty sure of this: that there are youngsters in the communities who know who they are, who know how the weapons get here, who knows exactly where to go and buy them. If we had an officer that was engaged in that community, the officer would know.

OFFICER CLAY BURCH: Do we know where some guns are coming from? Yeah, we do.

Officer Clay Burch is the problem-solving officer with the Oakland Police Department. He’s been covering neighborhoods in East and Deep East Oakland for a year and a half.

OFFICER BURCH: I personally have put projects together to serve warrants on homes that I know have narcotics and drugs in them.

Burch says it’s a decentralized business with many small suppliers.

OFFICER BURCH: There are more guns in the trunks of criminals today to support criminal activity for the next 50 years, no matter if you stopped producing guns today. We are way too many guns out there.

That’s in part because people don’t just buy guns in this neighborhood – they share them. In a single street, a gun can live a long life.

Jakada Imani of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights says authorities have to wake up to the epidemic that gun violence has become in black communities.

IMANI: We know how to solve problems like this. When there was a shooting at Columbine, they brought in therapists and counselors and there has not been one more shooting in Columbine. When there’s a shooting in East Oakland, the firefighters come and wash the blood down the gutter. The police go door to door, harassing people about what they’ve seen and don’t offer them any support, and we don’t do what it takes to actually help those communities heal from the trauma they’ve just experienced.

Without healing this trauma, Imani says hurt people will continue to hurt other people. Lives will be cut short, but the story of the street gun continues.

For Crosscurrents, I’m Sarah Gonzalez in East Oakland.

Reporter Sarah Gonzalez is an NPR Kroc Fellow, and graduate of Mills College in Oakland. For more criminal justice coverage, check out our blog, the Informant.

This story originally aired on October 15, 2009.