Oakland PD Airhorn Advice is an Admission of Gun Control Failure

“Amid a surge in crime in Oakland, California, police have advised residents to use air horns to alert neighbors to intruders and add security bars to their doors and windows,” CNN reports. “[Resident Toni] Bird, who moved to Oakland 2 1/2 years ago, said she took their advice to heart. She now has three air horns and five security cameras around her home.”

What good that will do her if she’s ever under attack is left unsaid. While plenty of evidence of Defensive Gun Uses (DGUs) exists, Defensive Airhorn Uses is a statistical nonstarter. Also left unaddressed is what a neighbor is supposed to do once alerted. Anecdotal experience says nothing—either that or pull out their cell phones and start texting or recording, provided they think they can without experiencing blowback (assuming they don’t join in).

So, it figures the advice from Oakland Police is as useless as their “abysmal” response time to 911 calls:

“Between 2018 and 2022, the time between when residents called 911 to report high-priority incidents—which include imminent physical danger and violent crimes involving weapons— and when police showed up went from an average of 12.7 minutes to 19.1 minutes, a more than 50% increase.”

It also figures the last thing they want to do is advise citizens to arm themselves. Instead, they busy themselves with holding “buybacks” to “turn guns into garden tools,” leading the starry-eyed event organizer to deem the collection of a whopping 42 guns from everyone BUT gangbangers gush-worthy:

“’We want to curb violence in the city of Oakland,’ she said, adding that, ‘The bottom line is it was a phenomenal event’ this year.”

Reality was never the strong suit of citizen disarmament zealots. And evidently they’ve never heard of pitchfork murders (made possible by California “safe storage” laws).

As for curbing Oakland violence, they won’t if this is all they’ve got. Instead, what they’ll see are unending headlines like:

• “A show of unity after Oakland suffers 4 homicides in 10 hours.”
• “Oakland police investigating 50th homicide of 2023.”
• “Most Oakland homicides go unsolved. Why don’t officials have a plan to fix it?”

Oakland officials not only don’t have a plan to fix anything but what they’re doing can only make things worse.

Start with former idiot mayor, Libby Schaaf, demanding more federal citizen disarmament edicts “after gunmen fired at least 30 rounds inside one of the schools.” That she didn’t even try to explain how that would work is no surprise. The prohibitionists never can, which is just as well, since it can’t.

New Mayor Sheng Thao is adding local controls that won’t work, either:

“Create a Mayor’s Office of Gun Violence Prevention … Implement an on-going gun buyback program … Work regionally to stop the flow of illegal guns into Oakland and Alameda County … Ensure OPD is utilizing state of the art gun tracing programs … Work to broaden the city and state’s ban on ghost guns … Support and increase OPD’s efforts to investigate and prevent gun violence.”

That certainly said a lot of nothing that will not impact career predator behavior one bit.

Marching in lockstep with Thao is the City Council, which unanimously approved her stupid “buyback” idea because they don’t have any other answers, and this makes it look like they’re doing something. That’s the same City Council that voted to defund the police to the tune of $17M until even Schaaf said they’d gone too far.

Then there’s Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, who ran for office badmouthing the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision as “a candidate with the Moms Demand Action Gun Sense distinction,” and  who since went on social media to disqualify a veteran judge from hearing criminal cases after he “rejected the plea deal Price offered Delonzo Logwood, accused of three murders – one during a carjacking/robbery, a murder for hire, and killing a witness set to testify against his step brother. He faces 75 years to life in prison if convicted. Price offered him 15 years on a single voluntary manslaughter charge.”

We should probably also mention that Price is a Soros DA.

This is what Oakland’s “law-abiding citizens” have to rely on when their lives and property are being threatened by a protected class of urban predator. Blow an air horn and the police might show up in an hour. Meanwhile, if they ever do catch the perp, he’ll be back on the streets in time to claim new victims thanks to plea deals and complaints about “overrepresentation” (and cops had better not get rough with him if they don’t want to be fired and prosecuted, and maybe even blamed for the city being burned).

Still, it’s tough to feel sorry for people who consistently vote 80% Democrat. True, “progressive” government fails because that’s what it does, but ultimately, it would be powerless if citizenship malpractice wasn’t the rule in urban areas.

They’ve got the communist-sympathizing government they voted for. Unfortunately, wherever they enjoy a tyranny of the majority, so do the rest of us who perceive manipulators counting on the lawlessness getting worse, and demands for government to do something, anything to stop it getting louder.

About David Codrea:

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.