Photo: Louis Freedberg/EdSource

Memorial to Reggina Jefferies in downtown Oakland in 2016

Photograph: Louis Freedberg/EdSource

Memorial to Reggina Jefferies in downtown Oakland in 2016

Congress' failure to do anything to forbid mass shootings of the kind that disproportionately take the lives of immature people was all too predictable – and depressing.

Afterwards all, if Congress could non be moved to act afterwards 1st-graders were slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary, or students were killed in their classrooms at Columbine High, it is hard to imagine that whatever affair else — even the Orlando massacre — would trigger a rational response.

It makes me despair that anything will be done to stop the far more numerous but most invisible incidents of gun violence that take the lives of immature people in communities beyond the The states every twenty-four hour period.

Like the i that resulted in the death of 17-year-old Reggina Jefferies, a block from my office in downtown Oakland two days later on the Orlando massacre.

It took place on a bright late afternoon a cake from City Hall equally some of my office mates were heading home from work. Three other young people were as well shot, but survived.

Among other things, Reggina was a gifted dancer. She had just performed at the funeral for two friends who had drowned in an equally tragic incident in a lake in a rural part of California over Memorial Day weekend.

Her mother, Onika Wilson, had taken Reggina to a funeral for the boys at an East Oakland church, so dropped her off at the Venue Guild in downtown Oakland for a repass — a celebration afterwards the funeral.

"I called my daughter at 5:25 and asked her if she was OK and she said yes," Wilson told reporters. "I got a telephone call that my daughter had been shot at v:36."

The reports on the incident are still vague as to what happened. Reggina and other celebrants left the club around five:30 p.g. Apparently two men on the street who had nothing to practice with them got into an argument and started shooting at each other.

Whatever happened is not especially relevant. Reggina was caught in the crossfire of random bullets. If there were fewer guns in apportionment, she could well be live today.

"If anyone out there knows anything out there, please let me know anything," her mother pleaded.

Reggina is one of over 8,000 homicide victims who lose their lives to gun violence in the Usa each year– a fatality charge per unit that far exceeds that of any other high-income country.

That'southward at least in part a effect of too many guns flowing  into our communities, affecting the almost vulnerable communities beginning.

Although young people in their teens and 20s are disproportionately the victims, homicide rates have actually declined dramatically over the by two decades.  Theories grow as to the cause, but rarely practice fewer guns appear on the list of explanations.

All the same  teenage homicides  — virtually all of which are gun inflicted — are nonetheless far as well high. They are the second leading crusade of death among all teenagers. Among blackness youth, they far outstrip other causes of expiry.

Each 24-hour interval over the past week I've walked by an elaborate memorial  of flowers, photos, candles and tributes to Reggina in front end of the parking garage where she died.

It volition likely be there for a few more weeks, mayhap months. A $25,000 reward has been posted for information about Reggina'south killers, and so far without any apparent results. Later on two days of reporting on the killing, new coverage has been non-existent.  In the meantime, the news media continue to explore every aspect of the Orlando killings, as they should.

But until lawmakers  at the highest levels of regime decide to do something about the cascade of guns on our streets, young lives like Reggina'southward will exist needlessly wasted. And communities like Oakland, and too many others across the United States, volition continue to drain.

To go more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource's no-cost daily email on latest developments in pedagogy.