Oakland’s CeaseFire program was a program that targeted at-risk people in the community, those who were deemed most likely to be involved in violent crime and to hopefully prevent them from going down that road.

It’s a program that, while not 100 percent effective, has shown to actually do a whole lot of good.

Unfortunately, for whatever reason, the CeaseFire program there was shut down. Now, with violent crime soaring in Oakland, officials there have decided to bring it back.

In an effort to stop gun violence, city leaders in Oakland are going back to the future, resurrecting a plan to stop gun violence — a ceasefire[sic].

“Ceasefire is back stronger than ever in 2022 in Oakland,” said Mayor Libby Schaaf.

She stood with the city’s police chief and members of the faith community letting people know the ceasefire program is back in full operation after the pandemic forced them to scale it back.

…

“We take no pleasure in having to take enforcement action,” said the mayor. “We would much rather people accept the services, make different decisions in their lives and actually make Oakland a better city by putting down guns.”

This is actually good news.

My question is, why was this not Plan “A” when things started to get bad? I get scaling stuff back because of the pandemic, but as soon as it became clear there was a problem, why didn’t officials stand the program back up first and foremost?

Don’t try and tell me it’s because officials don’t believe in government programs. We all know that’s not the case, not in Oakland specifically or California in general. So why didn’t they start this back up from the get-go?

See, while I’m not a fan of government programs, CeaseFire programs have two advantages over things like gun control. One is that they actually work. The other is that implementing them doesn’t infringe on the fundamental, constitutionally-protected rights of others.

CeaseFire and similar programs have a tendency to actually do some good.

And yet, all too often, people in places like Oakland prefer to turn to things like gun control as the answer when programs like this are literally right there.

Many in the gun rights community feel that it’s never really about crime, that criminal activity is just an excuse to try and control us. Honestly, it sounds kind of conspiracy theory-ish to me, though there are definitely times when I can’t think of anything else it really could be.

However, it’s far more likely that many of these lawmakers are simply uncomfortable with guns and don’t think you should have them and have rationalized gun control as a crime prevention tool as a way to try and shape the nation in the direction they want.

Frankly, though, the why doesn’t matter. The simple fact is that this is what they do. Programs like CeaseFire don’t help them fit that mold so they apparently just don’t think of them until much later.

But we’re supposed to take their word for things.

I can’t imagine why people are fleeing California in droves.