Can We Stop Shooting Each Other, Please?

There's crime in the big city. Then, there's our big city...

Image Source: StopHoustonGangs.org

When I moved back here a couple years ago, I knew there were a lot of murders in Oakland, but I figured (perhaps naively) that they were mostly gang-related. A recent outbreak of shootings in Oakland, less than a month after the Newtown, CT elementary school shootings, bring the issue of gun violence closer to home and impossible to ignore.

I was driving home on Friday afternoon last week when I came across a police roadblock in Glenview, Oakland. Police had roped off the corner at Canon and Wellington where earlier that afternoon, the body of a young man had apparently been dumped by the roadside. His name was Larry Lovett, he was 31 from Stockton and formerly of Oakland - no apparent ties to the neighborhood in the lower hills of Oakland, just dumped there. That was only the beginning. Within a few hours three other murders were recorded in Oakland, and by the end of the weekend, there had been 15 shootings, all in one city - ours!

Theories abound about the firearms rampage that left four dead in one day. Was it rival gangs duking it out? Apparently the same type of AR-15 assault rifles outfitted with high-capacity drum magazines (what was used in two of these four shootings) have been used in what the East Bay Express says is an ongoing feud between the Case Gang and Money Team.

A few weeks earlier, in the same neighborhood of Park Boulevard, 27-year-old Clifford Snead was shot dead after getting off a bus. He was the father of a young son. No other explanation. It doesn't make sense.

A new coalition called SAVE, which stands for Soldiers Against Violence Everywhere, is holding local rallies at murder sites around Oakland to raise awareness.

Zachary Carey, pastor of the True Vine Ministries, is working with SAVE to pray at these sites. "When you hear about violence in America on the news, the tagline associated with it is gang-related,” Carey said. “Then if you're living in Montclair, Piedmont, Walnut Creek then you're like, ‘I'm not involved in a gang, that'll never happen to me.’ But the reality is people that are being murdered now are not gang-related, they're innocent bystanders, they're collateral damage. So if they can be collateral damage, guess what, so can you and I.”

Carey's words are pretty chilling...if that doesn't make you think it's time to get involved, what does?