Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez, The Chronicle

On Jan. 3, Oakland officials celebrated a reduction in crime — the sixth straight year of declines in homicides and injury shootings combined. A day later, there was a triple homicide in West Oakland.

And, as police officers combed the grisly scene for evidence and witnesses, two more people were shot in West Oakland. Their wounds weren’t fatal.

Sure, homicides have steadily dropped, but it’s clear there are still too many guns and too many shootings in Oakland.

On Jan. 10, Oakland and federal law enforcement officials announced the confiscation of more than four dozen firearms. Some of the seized guns have been linked to shootings and homicides in Oakland, according to Anne Kirkpatrick, chief of the Oakland Police Department.

But where do the guns used in Oakland crimes come from?

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence has been pushing the city to focus on gun tracing. Instead of untangling why Joe shot John, Brady argues that law enforcement should put a greater emphasis on investigating how Joe got the gun to shoot John.

There aren’t any licensed firearm stores in the Oakland, but guns moving from the legal market to the streets is at the heart of the violence plaguing communities where children grow up hearing the sounds of gunshots more than they do the chimes of an ice cream truck.

According to Brady, 90 percent of crime guns are sold by 5 percent of licensed firearm dealers.

“Let’s pour our energy into this small percentage of dealers who are making profits off of the harm that’s being created in communities,” said Erica Rice, a program manager for the Brady Campaign.

That’s why Brady has partnered with the UCLA Policy Lab to offer Oakland a free trace analysis of the guns police collect, similar to the work the lab has done for the Chicago Police Department.

But Oakland hasn’t accepted the offer. According to Brady, a draft agreement was submitted to the city attorney’s office in December 2017.

“This project is a priority for the city,” Alex Katz, a spokesman for the city attorney’s office, told me in an email. “Our office and OPD are working to complete it expeditiously.”

The Oakland City Council recognizes the seriousness of the city’s illegal gun problem. In May, as part of the 2018 mid-cycle budget requests, Oakland Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan requested money for a police crime analyst to exclusively focus on gun tracing. Her request was approved.

“If you shut down the illegal gun dealers and you shut down the sources of illegal guns, there won’t be gun crime,” Kaplan said. “I don’t get how you’re taking violent crime seriously if you’re not going after the guns. We really need a systematic way to be going after the guns, and shutting down the illegal gun dealers.”

Johnna Watson, a public information officer with the Oakland Police Department, didn’t respond when I inquired about the status of the crime analyst position.

“By allowing a good trace analysis, you can target your resources,” said Rice, a former program analyst with Oakland Unite, the violence intervention unit within the city’s human services department. “We are not trying to promote gun abstinence. We’re really just trying to promote owner responsibility.”

Here’s one reason why the focus on gun tracing needs to be intensified. The guns seized last week were linked to fatal shootings in Oakland using the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, a specialized computer network that stores digital images of recovered pieces of ballistic evidence which allows law enforcement to determine if a firearm was used in a previous crime.

But Steve Lindley, a former police officer and Sacramento bureau chief of the California Department of Justice, told me that using the ballistic information network is time-consuming and expensive.

He said gun tracing for local agencies is cheaper, because state law requires that all agencies input recovered guns into the state’s automated firearm system. If a gun is marked as a crime gun, that automatically kicks off a trace report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The report identifies trends and patterns in the flow of illegal firearms, among other things.

The data then need to be analyzed.

“You want to know where that gun came from,” said Lindley, now a Brady program manager based in Los Angeles.

Is there a manufacturer, wholesaler or dealer acting criminally? Was the gun stolen?

“Or do we have a bad individual that’s purchasing these guns legally, but then putting them out on the streets by selling them illegally to people?” Lindley said. “You want to know, because if they’re doing it once, they’re probably doing it multiple times.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr