Gun Control Debate Overlooks Biggest Victims: Black People

During a talk at the East Oakland Youth Development Center in Oakland, parents and students stand after being asked if they lost a friend to gun violence. Photo: James Tensuan, Special To The Chronicle

By Otis R. Taylor Jr.

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…