Youths Mobilize Against a Neighborhood Menace -- Handguns
Pacific News Service, News Feature, Shadi Rahimi Posted: Apr 08, 2005
Editor's Note: In San Francisco, teens who have seen friends die in gun violence are taking a stand to support a citywide handgun ban. The proposed ban is controversial on the street, where other youths say they need guns for protection.
SAN FRANCISCO--At night, outside the Milton Meyer Recreation Center in San Francisco's Hunter's Point neighborhood, a 17-year-old stands under dim fluorescent lights. His eyes dart back and forth as he surveys the teens who shout greetings to one another on the street, which has been the site of clashes between rival gangs. Last March, a man was killed in front of Milton Meyer Gym.
"Nowadays, a lot of people have guns, and they ain't really thinking about it," says the black teenager, whose tiny diamond earring glints in the light each time he turns his head. "There ain't really nothing restricting it, unless the police and everybody cracked down."
The teen, whose brother survived being shot six times last year, quietly expressed support for a proposed citywide handgun ban, a hotly debated measure that would limit gun ownership to those required to have them for work, such as police officers and security guards. Under California state law, those 21 and older do not need permits or licenses to own handguns.
The young man will turn 18 before the next election, and says he would vote in favor of the measure if it appeared on the ballot -- a view so controversial in his neighborhood that his mother later pleaded by telephone that the teen's name be withheld. "We live in a very bad area," she explained.
While some teens from San Francisco's most gun-plagued neighborhoods may not feel safe expressing support for a gun ban, others are taking a public stand. Members of San Francisco groups such as Brothers Against Guns and United Playaz have been rallying support during halftime at high school basketball games, and are now circulating petitions in high schools.
Sixteen-year-old Courtney Chen, a member of the Balboa High School youth group United Playaz, says she is collecting signatures from other students in memory of classmate DeShaun Dawson, who was shot and killed on a bus two years ago at the age of 15. She is gathering the signatures, she says, to show city officials that young San Franciscans strongly support a handgun ban.
"I'm hoping the ban does come through," Chen says. "It means one less thing you have to worry about."
But gun lobbyists are mobilizing also -- against the measure. This month, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and several other gun groups plan to file an injunction to keep the measure from being placed on the November ballot, says Chuck Michel, a Los Angeles attorney who represents the NRA and the California Rifle and Pistol Association.
The proposed ban, says Michel, would prohibit law-abiding citizens from protecting themselves. "The city's problem is drug dealers and gang members, not gun owners," he says.
Some young people also oppose the gun ban, arguing that firearms are necessary protection in their neighborhoods. Others, like 15-year-old Hunter's Point resident LaQuan Dawes, argue that the ban would do little to stop the influx of guns into their neighborhoods.
Dawes, who says he knows dozens of people who have been victims of gun violence, says the young gun owners he knows buy their weapons from friends, family members, or on the street. In fact, he says, illegal guns are so easily attained that "a ban would be a good idea, but I don't think it's really going to work."
Teens who actively support the measure say they plan to present their petitions to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors within the next few months. "We want to give them proof that not only adults, but kids, and the whole community, want and need change," says Balboa High School student Alexandra Souza, 17.
Souza has lost four young friends to guns: Three were murdered and the fourth shot himself. She believes a citywide handgun ban would reduce gun violence by decreasing the number of legal firearms that could be resold illegally. Souza says she knows people who have bought handguns illicitly for under $100. "All you need is to know someone," she says.
Homicides of teens and young adults are much more likely to be committed with a gun than homicides of adults, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. In San Francisco, 63 of last year's 88 homicides were committed with guns, according to the police department's crime analysis unit. About 18 percent of those killed with firearms since last year have been 21 or under. The majority of these were young black men.
Inside the Milton Meyer Recreation Center, a group of black teens attending a weekly meeting of Brothers Against Guns listen to a man with a thick white beard lecture about the danger of firearms. On a bulletin board nearby are pictures of two dozen slain young men, all of who were killed by gunfire.
Last year, two young men who attended the weekly probation meetings at the center were shot and killed, says Chico Wells, 30, a founding member of the San Francisco group, which offers youths violence prevention and life skills programs.
Two separate photographs of the young men, each smiling widely in neatly pressed suits, are now posted on the bulletin board.
"A lot of these kids have guns for protection because of their neighborhoods," Wells says. "They'll tell me, "I'd rather get caught with it than without it.' In their communities, you could walk across the street and be in somebody else's territory."
Banning handguns is only the first step in reducing gun violence, according to public health experts. City officials need to address discrimination and the lack of quality housing, jobs, education and health care, says Andrew McGuire, director of the Pacific Center for Violence Prevention at San Francisco General Hospital.
But grassroots efforts such as the one being led now by youth groups in San Francisco have been effective, McGuire said, most notably in Pomona, where a group of young people successfully lobbied the city in 1997 to ban the small, cheap handguns known as Saturday Night Specials. Similar bans were also enacted in about 40 other California cities, including San Francisco.
Rudy Corpuz, the 28-year-old director of United Playaz and a leader of the movement to ban handguns in San Francisco, says the ballot measure is important, but it's only part of a larger effort.
"Whether it passes or not, we're still going to keep on moving," he says. "That's our responsibility -- our duty. I'm not gonna wait until any more kids are dead."
PNS contributor Shadi Rahimi is an editor for YO! Youth Outlook, a magazine by and about Bay Area youths and a PNS project.
CLICK HERE to watch VIDEO on the United Playaz violence prevention program.
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