Fear, anger, death, these things are feelings for Oakland citizens and they aren’t stopping. There are many problems with Oakland’s gun violence and we want this fixed now. We can reduce gun violence in Oakland by making harder access to guns, banning weapons with large clips, and requiring background checks.

Gun violence is the violence caused by firearms or guns. The problems are guns with large clips can kill many people fast causing a ton of  tragedies. In my“ Rate of Fire poster”, it is clear that an AR-15 can fire 600 rounds per minute. This matters because it shows that a large clip and only one person, can kill 600 people in one minute. This is different because the old musket could only fire 3 rounds per minute.

   Another problem is that guns are to easy to access. What causes the problem is that the gun laws and the illegal gun selling is too common and gun laws aren’t strong enough to stop gun violence. “OP-ED: Oakland Needs a Crime Reduction Plan Says, Desley Brooks.” According to Desley Brooks she says“Oakland thinks that there are no gun stores here and Oakland has no idea how many illegal guns are coming into our city.” This matters because if Oakland doesn’t know about any guns in the city, then people could easily buy guns illegally and get guns without getting into trouble.

Another cause of gun violence is young men purchasing and using guns to kill others they want to kill. According to Reygan Cunningham, Mike Mclively, and the article they wrote “What Oakland Can Teach California About Gun Violence Prevention,” “The age of people from whom weapons were taken is most commonly young men 18 to 21 in Oakland.”This matters because this explains that many young men have guns to use for maybe violence or other terrible actions.

One solution to large clips is to just ban them because even if you need to protect yourself, you don’t need a large clip. In the article “Taking Action to Stop Gun Violence in Oakland.”Vice mayor Rebecca Kaplan says, “And there have been more than 150 school shootings since the school shooting at sandy hook elementary in December 2012.” This matters because this exclaims that there are a ton of school shootings and reducing gun magazines will reduce deaths because less bullets in magazines will cause the person who wants to use the gun not be able to kill.

A second way or solution to reduce gun violence is requiring background checks to check if criminals are purchasing weapons to cause harm to others. In this “OP-ED:Tragedy in Oakland and Oregon.”Barbara Parker a Oakland City Attorney mentions.  Some common sense regulations like universal background checks and licensing for all gun purchases.” This matters because it shows that background checks make sense so criminals or people who aren’t fit to own a gun shouldn’t have one.

A third solution to solve gun violence is to raise the legal age to own a gun in Oakland to 21 so there is less violence from young men in gangs and issues. According to “Reygan Cunningham, Mike Mclively, and the article they wrote  What Oakland Can Teach California About Gun Violence Prevention”. The age of people whom weapons were taken from were mostly the ages 18-21 in Oakland. This matters because at this age men mature more in their brain and their prefrontal cortices may be mature enough to own a firearm.

For Oakland to have less gun violence we need it to reduce easy access to weapons,ban large magazines, and requiring background checks. Even though gun violence has never affected me right now, it may in the future and this is why I’m writing this. The information presented suggest you to think about gun violence here and if you can vote to stop it in any way try to vote for it and also try to help friends and family to stop causing gun violence. You can also raise awareness by telling people you know