Gun control debate overlooks biggest victims: black people

Regina Jackson (left) hugs Destiny Shabazz, who was prepar ing for her trip to Washington for the March for Our Lives. Regina Jackson (left) hugs Destiny Shabazz, who was prepar ing for her trip to Washington for the March for Our Lives. Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Gun control debate overlooks biggest victims: black people 1 / 8 Back to Gallery

Gun control debates always follow mass shootings and then tend to fade.

The debate escalated again after the Valentine’s Day shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., and this time seems unlikely to end anytime soon.

But there’s something missing. I’m here to tell you that now, as in the past, the debate is overlooking the people most threatened by guns: black people.

Black people are more likely than any other ethnicity in the United States to be killed by a gun. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, black men are 13 times more likely to be shot and killed than white men.

The numbers are startling: There were 2.4 gun homicides per 100,000 white men from 2012 to 2016. For black men, it was 30.7 per 100,000 in the same period. In July, the U.S. Census Bureau estimated that 13.3 percent of the population was black.

That’s why Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, an outspoken gun control advocate, wanted local students present in Washington on Saturday for March for Our Lives.

She asked Regina Jackson, the president of the East Oakland Youth Development Center, to coordinate a delegation of black students from a city where 354 people were killed or injured in shootings in 2017.

I talked to some of the 10 students in the delegation before they traveled to Washington. There isn’t a day these kids don’t think about the gun violence in their neighborhoods, and I was moved by how serene they were in discussing it.

Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle Students gather at the East Oakland Youth Development Center ahead...

That was the motive behind Lee’s decision to invite them.

“We’re at a moment where young people are leading, and policymakers need to hear the voices of young people from my district,” Lee told me. “We have a duty and responsibility to channel their brilliance and energy.”

And maybe give them some hope.

The trip was the first time Devlynn Nolan, a 17-year-old senior at Castlemont High School, flew on a plane. Her brother was shot and killed while sitting in a parked car near 73rd Avenue and Hamilton Street in East Oakland in 2013.

He was 17.

Destiny Shabazz, a senior at McClymonds High School, said she’s lost more family and friends because of guns than the years she’s been alive.

She’s 17.

It’s time that urban gun violence is included in the gun control debate. I’ll say the same for gun violence committed by law enforcement against black and brown citizens.

A 2017 report released by Mapping Police Violence showed that 27 percent of the 1,147 people killed by police officers last year were black. And get this: The data revealed that black people were more likely than any other demographic to be unarmed and less likely to be threatening someone when killed by police.

On March 18 in Sacramento, Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old black man and a father, was shot in the backyard of his grandparents’ home because police mistook a cell phone he held in his hand for a weapon.

Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle Raheem Haskins leans on his mother, Kumba Parker, at the East...

In February, Ronnell Foster, 33, was fatally shot after he allegedly attacked a Vallejo police officer with a flashlight. I’ve written about the fatal shootings of black and brown men by Vallejo police officers, and I’ve grown frustrated because there hasn’t been an uproar over police conduct in the city.

“So many of the people that are policing don’t know the neighborhoods they’re policing,” said Jackson, who also serves on Oakland’s Police Commission.

What’s more, most politicians don’t grow up in impoverished neighborhoods, and few walk the destitute streets in their districts. This means they don’t have a sense of the resolve required to live on the streets they govern.

Raheem Haskins, a 15-year-old sophomore at Skyline High School, always looks out for people and situations to avoid. Raheem, who started his own clothing line to show friends they didn’t have to be thieves to get money, doesn’t act like most teenagers. He stays inside on nights and weekends because he wants to keep living.

While shootings and murders are on a five-year decline in Oakland, some young people still consider packing a gun a safety requirement.

“It’s people who carry guns that go to my school, not necessarily looking to kill nobody, but just worried about their life,” Raheem said.

He’s seen people robbed of their shoes and money at gunpoint — on school grounds.

Jada White, 13, an eighth-grader at Edna Brewer Middle School, thinks it’s crazy that Raheem is used to it. “We grow up around violence,” she said. “That’s not something we can deny.”

Jada doesn’t know her father. He was gunned down soon after she was born. She now lives in San Leandro but told me there were bullet holes in the walls when she lived on Majestic Avenue in East Oakland.

She wants lawmakers to limit the access to guns.

“People are dying, and we’re not doing anything to stop this,” she said. “It’s kind of crazy, because children are dying.”