When MaryAnn Alvarado asks her students if they know how to get a gun, their response always takes her aback. “Everyone raises their hand,” she said.
Alvarado, 36, runs Teens on Target, a program operated by YouthAlive! in Oakland, California, that trains middle- and high-schoolers to become violence prevention advocates in their own communities. For many of the teens she sees, especially those coming from underserved neighborhoods, gun violence is normalized, she explained, or they believe that stopping gun violence is impossible. Others feel like gun ownership is okay to protect their family. “I’ve heard youth say, ‘I feel like everybody owns a gun here,’” she said.
