Dear reader,

Welcome again to the Guns and Lies in America newsletter. This week, we delved into what’s driving the significant decline in gun homicides in California’s Bay Area.

Gun violence-related deaths in the region have dropped 30% in the last 10 years – a much steeper decline than the US as a whole. We spoke with four national and local experts on what’s behind the change, and what can help communities heal and prevent shootings. A recurring theme in each account is the integral role that people who are most affected by this type of violence play in stopping it.

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A makeshift memorial for the Airbnb house rental shooting victims in Orinda. Photograph: Ray Chavez/The Mercury News via Getty Images/MediaNews Group via Getty Images

Support sessions for new mothers in the city of Richmond led Monifa Akosua to wonder how health, consciousness and surviving are connected in communities struck by gun violence. “Statistics and news reports show that gun violence in the region has declined sharply in the past decade … But there’s still mental trauma that’s not being addressed. Our community still needs healing,” says Akosua.

In his recent book Bleeding Out, Thomas Abt of Harvard University lays out an eight-year, $100m plan to reduce gun violence by 50% in the US’s 40 most violent cities. “Urban violence needs to be viewed as a problem to be solved, not an argument to be won,” Abt notes. “We all pay those costs. While the impact of urban violence is felt directly by a very small number of people, we are all suffering from it indirectly.”

David Monroe spent 19 years in prison for shooting a rival gang member at age 15. Now an organizer for a well-known violence intervention program in San Francisco, Monroe is moving to his hometown of Stockton to strengthen violence prevention efforts there. “When I was young I was gonna die over a color, so this would be a better way to go, dying for something I love. These kids are in a burning house, and I’m going back, and I’m gonna go help them in whatever way I can.”

“No one is closer to the decades-long epidemic of violence in Oakland than those who have grown up around it, those who live daily with the specter of violence, whose sleep has been punctured by the sound of gunfire, whose lives are for ever marked by the pain of loved ones lost,” writes Anne Marks, the executive director of Youth Alive! “It is these people, and the organizations within which they work, who are the unsung heroes of the decline.”

David Monroe, at seven or eight years old, with his younger brother Danny. Photograph: Courtesy of David Monroe

Looking forward

In the new year, we’ll be bringing you the stories of three Bay Area natives who were shot and survived their injuries, exploring the social, physical and economic repercussions of gun violence trauma. We’ll also be investigating the reasons behind San Francisco’s historically low rate of gun violence, and the impact of gun violence in Latino communities in the Bay.

Stories we’re reading