Oakland, California, U.S.A. – Oakland has always been known for its vibrant, diverse culture, proximity to San Francisco, and our soon-to-depart baseball team, the A’s.

Unfortunately, Oakland has also been known for crime and violence, much of which starts with guns. 

Teenager Sophia Guerra has lived on the border between Oakland and another city her entire life.

Gun shots, she said, “have woken me up. I have to be alert.”

The threat of gun violence, with its bloodied patina of tension and fear, has embedded itself into Oakland life. 

In 2022, violent crime here rose by 21% from 2022 to 2023, according to Oakland police data. The number of assaults with a firearm increased from 286 in 2019 to 509 in 2023. 

But Oakland may not have always been like this.

Sungsoo Han, 47, immigrated to Oakland from South Korea when he was 14. Han was able to look upon 1990s Oakland with a fresh pair of eyes.

“Telegraph Ave looks nicer and brighter than back then, but I feel like it’s not as safe as it was back then,” said Han. “But if I were asked that same question four or five years ago, I would feel different. I feel a lot has changed.” 

Part of the change lies in the systems upholding Oakland. Gun violence has long been tackled by the Ceasefire Strategy, the successful Oakland government approach that utilized community support and aid for groups and individuals often associated with violence.

Ceasefire Strategy prioritized rehabilitation and cutting recidivism rates, and patched up the historically fraught relationship between the police department and the community it serves. Starting in 2013, following a national trend, it reduced the number of shootings in seven years from 557 to 284.

But budget cuts and policy changes before and during the pandemic led to the dilution of Ceasefire’s impact. In 2023, ShotSpotter technology (which tracks gunshots) activated 8,314 times. 

Han blamed the Oakland police.

“A friend in San Jose had his car stolen, called the police, and three minutes later, they were there,” Han said. “For us, you found out the car was stolen at four o’clock in the afternoon, the police came at midnight!”

He sighed. “It will be so much worse five or 10 years from now. Everyday life. Awareness when going to the car or coming out of the house will expand to fear every time in the day.” 

Oakland Councilmember Janani Ramachandran views what exacerbates the gun crisis differently.

“California has one of the strictest gun control laws in the country. For example, Oakland doesn’t have a single licensed gun dealer, so in reality, it is the illegal guns that are proliferating,” said Ramachandran, who represents District 4.

The rise in illegal guns extends nationwide.

Everytown for Gun Safety reported in 2023 that from 2020 to 2021 illegal gun trafficking rose by 48%, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives released a report in 2023 describing how from 2017 to 2021 the number of ghost guns – unserialized, homemade firearms – spiked from 1,629 to 19,273.

In California alone, 23,000 people who were not allowed to own a firearm possessed one, Attorney General Rob Bonta said in an annual report in March.

The illegal gun market has become exceedingly visible thanks to the reach and influence of social media.

“They’re super easy to buy illegally,” said Guerra, the teenager living on the Oakland border. “I was fooling around on Instagram, [and] it’s so easy to access a Glock.”

Guerra cited the confluence of mental health crises, drug abuse, and American vengeance culture.

“They see it in the movie, but don’t realize that they’re actually hurting people. Even in kid television, they have a mindset [that] I have to do something bad against them, hunt them down,” Guerra said.

Indeed, a 2015 study by The Economist showed that between 1985 and 2015, gun violence tripled in films advertised for children. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reported that before reaching adulthood, most children in America will see at least 200,000 violent acts in multimedia.

Ramachandran, on the other hand, expounded on the more niche demographic of gun owners, including women fearing domestic violence and those fearing rightwing extremism and armed militias. 

Female firearm ownership rose by 77% between 2005 and 2020, according to the National Rifle Association, and a 2021 Harvard study revealed 42% of gun owners are female.

In 2024, the Pew Research Center reported that 72% of female firearm owners say they bought their gun for self-defense.

As domestic violence increased by around 8% in the pandemic, according to the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice, women may have been incentivized more than ever to purchase a gun. And a 2021 National Firearms survey revealed that between the start of 2019 and April 2021, 3.5 million new gun owners were women.

But data contradicts the allure of firearms as a bastion against domestic violence. A 2011 report by the American Journal of Public Health found that when an abusive partner can access a firearm, the risk of women getting killed is 500% more likely. 

Han thought the recent rise in gun violence originated with the “end-of-the-world mentality” catalyzed by the pandemic. He referenced a recent brawl at a local Bay Area mall popular with teens.

“Locked down for years, [people] must release anger [and the] fear of missing out,” said Han. “Some people go to the bank to get cash, gold. Some people think about getting a gun.”

Ramachandran described gun violence as symptomatic of the systems in place that drive people to have a gun, citing the many factors in people’s formative years like being immersed into a “culture of guns” or attending a “safe public school.”

A November 2023 City of Oakland report revealed there were more than 600 suspensions for violence in the Oakland public school system and two on-campus shootings in the 2022 to 2023 school year. For youth aged 14 through 18, there were 67 reported shootings resulting in injury in 2022, 56 cases of intimate partner violence, and 46 rapes. 

Ramachadran stated that there was a “hopeless” aspect to adulthood in the Bay Area, where minimum wage doesn’t align with housing prices. Minimum wage is $16.50 per hour, while the average monthly rent for an apartment is around $2,581.

“The options are limited to you, and if you didn’t grow up with role models who could show you other pathways are out there, you’re going to turn to the streets around you, which unfortunately have gun violence and often gang warfare,” Ramachandran said. 

Kimberly Southwell is a staunch supporter of gun rights. Southwell, who’s lived in California since the 1980s, was first interested in guns when she attended a four-day shooting lesson serving as a fundraiser for cancer. Her interest blossomed, and she eventually became an NRA certified pistol instructor, then an NRA certified range safety instructor, and finally a concealed carry weapon holder.

Southwell joined a Girl and a Gun chapter – a gun club for women – in San Marcos, where the San Diego director introduced her to the more pro-gun groups. She is now the California state director for Women for Gun Rights, a national organization.

Throughout her interview with Youth Journalism International, Southwell often used the blunt dichotomy of “bad guy” vs “good guy” and shared a mixture of credible stats with far-right propagated misinformation.

Southwell said that California legislators don’t “understand what a gun does or how it works,” and that gun control throttles the Second Amendment. Her interpretation of the Second Amendment was that it “allows for every citizen to be armed” and that “anyone for any reason can have any weapon we want.”

She contrasted it with being forced to buy shoes only from Nike, despite the obvious differences between footwear and automatic weaponry. 

Viewing gun ownership as a constitutional right to defend oneself is a leading argument among pro-gun activists.

But a 2022 report by The National Crime Victimization Survey found that out of all who were victims of nonfatal violent crimes, only 2% defended themselves with a gun, the number dropping to 1% in victims of property crime. And the number of defensive gun uses was a seventh of the number of gun crimes.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights declares that while the “right to life, liberty, and security of person” were crucial components of global human rights, they shouldn’t be employed in opposition to the United Nations’ ideals.

In other words, self-defense may be a right, but should be proportional to the threat and not infringe on the human rights of others.

While Southwell conceded that gun crime has gotten out of control, she insisted that the “real problem” is a witches’ brew of stolen guns, inattentive culture – she pointed to teens constantly looking at their phones – criminals released from jail in 2022, and a lack of familial and communal closeness due, she said, to a new culture of participation prizes. 

Oakland isn’t alone in grappling with gun violence. Nationally, gun violence increased by 35% between 2019 and 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

According to Reuters, Americans make up 46% of the world’s firearms despite maintaining 4% of the global population. 

Guerra, viewing Oakland as a microcosm of a fracturing America, proposed adding gun violence to school education, so that people would be aware of the risks.

Ramachandran said too few violence prevention nonprofits focus on the perpetrator, and that it is crucial to “acknowledge that the men who tried to commit violence were victims of violence themselves when they were younger.”

“We need to think about gun violence holistically,” Ramachandran said, adding that to successfully face gun violence, society needs to change its perception of victimizer and victim. 

She spoke of the meaningfulness of  “holding yourself accountable, because change is very much so possible,” and said that many organizations doing “life-changing” work don’t receive enough funding.

Isabel Shen is a Reporter with Youth Journalism International. She lives in Oakland, California.