“Guns are just about as American as apple pie. To many, especially white folks, they've represented all the highfalutin ideals enshrined in the Constitution: independence, self-reliance and the ability to live freely. For Black folks, guns often symbolize all those same things – but, as we like to say on the show, it's complicated.
“Firearms have always loomed large in Black people's lives – going all the way back to the days of colonial slavery. Right from the jump, guns were tied up in America's thorny relationship with race; you can actually tell the story of how America's racial order takes shape, in part, by tracing the history of guns in the U.S. and who was allowed to own them.
(Gene Demby and Natilie Escobar. “From Negro Militias To Black Armament.” https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/12/22/949169826/from-negro-militias-to-black-armament. NPR. December 22, 2020.)
To this day, nothing frightens a White nationalist more than a Black man with a gun.
Am I wrong? I don't think so. And, I challenge you to prove Blacks have equal access to what many conservative Whites know as their Second Amendment rights.
Do black gun owners have equal protection under the Second Amendment? In theory, yes. The Second Amendment protects the right to bear arms. But Blacks have a complicated history with gun ownership. And, it has absolutely nothing to do with Critical Race Theory.
May the story be told.
From the beginning of European settlement, guns, and the White men wielding them, controlled indigenous peoples who resisted incursions onto their land and the enslaved peoples whose labor was essential for Southern plantations.
Gun control may have been portrayed as a measure to reduce crime, but even in its earliest forms firearms regulation has been used as a means to control specific societal groups by keeping them from possessing weapons. Gun control existed in North America even before the creation of the United States and was racially motivated in its earliest forms. The first law in the colony of Virginia that mentioned African-Americans was a 1664 act that barred free blacks from owning firearms.
Gun ownership was not free-for-all in the colonial period and in the early republic. Because of the importance of the militias to public safety, gun registration was mandatory and government officials had the right to come into your home to inspect your musket. The government had opinions as to which weapons you should buy and even as to how you should keep your weapon – mandating, for example, that gunpowder be stored in a safe manner.
The men who enrolled in militias in the early days of the nation – and, under the 1792 Militia Act, enrollment was mandatory for all able-bodied free White men between the ages of 18 and 45 – had six months to buy themselves “a musket, bayonet, and belt, two spare flints, a cartridge box with 24 bullets, and a knapsack.”
(Rebecca Onion. “Automatic for the People.” https://www.topic.com/automatic-for-the-people. July 2018.)
Before the Civil War, enslaved people could own guns with the approval of their masters, and freedmen in some states could get approval from local officials to carry weapons. But, following Nat Turner's slave rebellion, lawmakers began to curtail the gun-ownership rights of Blacks.
And, even though Black soldiers took up arms for the Union army and Congress passed a bill which gave Black soldiers returning from the battlefield the right to keep their weapons, lawmakers from places like Mississippi and Florida refused to accept this and passed Black Codes which restricted freedmen from owning guns or other weapons. Hordes of white vigilantes actually raided Black homes to confiscate them.
Some Southern Blacks continued to own firearms. During Reconstruction, guns became important symbols of freedom for ex-slaves. Observers throughout the post-war South noted how eager freedpeople were to procure “pistols, old muskets, and shot-guns” in preparation for self-defense, as possessing a gun sent a clear signal that its owner would not be intimidated.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that from time to time, armed freepeople successfully repelled Klan attacks on their homes. However, they were often outgunned by these racists.
In addition, states would not protect Blacks from White violence. In came Jim Crow laws and and the continued oppression of African Americans.
Segregation measures continued into the 20th century with laws being disproportionately enforced against Black Americans. Meanwhile as the KKK continued to gain followers and terrorize Blacks in the South, many politicians turned a blind eye.
Gun control measures expanded in 1938 making it necessary to have a license to own firearms. The government could then grant or deny gun permits to applicants on the basis of suitability.
In 1966, members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in California. Members began openly carrying weapons in protest of police violence and in support of Black people's right to bear arms.
On May 2, 1967, members of the Black Panther Party congregated at the California State Capitol building carrying guns. They protested police brutality and the proposal of the Mulford Bill, a strict gun-control measure to to ban open carry of loaded weapons in the state. Panther leaders Bobby Seale and Huey Newton argued that the law was intended to disarm Black Californians.
Despite the protests, the bill was signed into law by Governor Ronald Reagan and supported by the National Rifle Association. Black Panther Party members were arrested for disturbing the peace.
"Anyone who would approve of this kind of demonstration must be out of their minds," Reagan said.
(Manisha Claire. “The Unequal History of African American Gun Rights.” https://www.topic.com/carrying-while-black. 2022.)
“The law was part of a wave of laws that were passed in the late 1960s regulating guns, especially to target African-Americans,” says Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms (2013).
Racial History Continues
Since the election of Donald Trump, guns sales to Black Americans have quadrupled, and black gun groups, such as the National African American Gun Association, report that attendance at their meetings has doubled.
Is it any wonder that racial minorities are seeking ways to protect themselves, with Trump having emboldened hate groups who see him as their long-awaited leader and with incidents of racial harassment and violence having escalated after his election.
And now, the latest Supreme Court ruling guarantee’s the Second Amendment right of people to carry their firearms in public space for “self-defense,” according to the Los Angeles Times. These new gun laws were advocated for because white people grew concerned about their gun rights. And, who is even more concerned than them? Black gun owners.
Consider Amir Locke, Philando Castile, Atatiana Jefferson – the list of Black licensed gun owners killed by police for having a gun keeps growing. Kelly Sampson from gun safety organization Brady told NPR this is precisely why Black people feel left out from their constitutional protection.
Then there's the perception of a black person carrying a gun. Tamir Rice, John Crawford and Robert Dentmond were all shot and killed by police because they were seen with objects that looked like real firearms.
“We live in a society that codes Black people in general as criminal but especially when we carry arms,” Sampson said. “So when you strip away all of the rhetoric around the Second Amendment, you still can’t get away from the fundamental issue that we live in a country where Black people are disproportionately dying from gun homicides, and Black people also are disproportionately impacted by police violence.”
Historically, the government worked to keep guns away from Black people or apply gun control laws specifically to us. Jabir Asa, minister of social media for the Cleveland chapter of the Huey P. Newton Gun Club, told NPR the court’s decision is a way to address the disparity.
Take California’s Mulford Act of 1967 for example. The National Rifle Association even backed it, though the bill prohibited the open carry of loaded weapons, a move directed toward the Black Panther Party.
“We have already seen historically that when you go on any kind of gun-grabbing campaign, the only people with guns are the kind of people who would never worry about the legality of having them in the first place. And then you find yourself in a position where you’re vulnerable to fascists,” said Asa, via NPR.
(Kalyn Womack. “Black Gun Owners React to Supreme Court’s Concealed Carry Decision https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/black-gun-owners-react-supreme-122545424.html. July 16, 2022.)
White Men And Guns
Since the 2008 election of President Obama, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled, while imports have doubled. This doesn’t mean more households have guns than ever before—that percentage has stayed fairly steady for decades. Rather, more guns are being stockpiled by a small number of individuals. Three percent of the population now owns half of the country’s firearms, says a recent, definitive study from the Injury Control Research Center at Harvard University.
The findings include:
An estimated 55 million Americans own guns.
The percentage of the U.S. population who own guns decreased slightly from 25% in 1994 to 22% last year.
Between 300,000 and 600,000 guns are stolen each year.
Gun owners tend to be white, male, conservative, and live in rural areas.
25% of gun owners in America are white or multi-racial, compared with 16% of Hispanics and 14% of African Americans.
There are an estimated 111 million handguns nationwide, a 71% increase from the 65 million handguns in 1994.
(Hepburn, Lisa; Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. “The US gun stock: Results from the 2004 national firearms survey.” Injury Prevention. 2007; 13:15-19.)
So, who is buying all these guns – and why?
The short answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male – but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.
The profile:
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated.
For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious – and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story – one in which they are once again the heroes.
When Northland College sociologist Angela Stroud studied applications for licenses to carry concealed firearms in Texas, she found that when men became fathers or got married, they started to feel very vulnerable, like they couldn’t protect families. She said,“For them, owning a weapon is part of what it means to be a good husband and a good father.” That meaning is “rooted in fear and vulnerability – very motivating emotions.”
But Stroud also discovered another motivation: racial anxiety. “A lot of people talked about how important Obama was to get a concealed-carry license: ‘He’s for free health care, he’s for welfare.’ They were asking, ‘Whatever happened to hard work?’” Obama’s presidency, they feared, would empower minorities to threaten their property and families.
Jeremy Adam Smith, editor of Greater Good and John S. Knight journalism fellow at Stanford University, reports …
“The insight Stroud gained from her interviews is backed up by many, many studies. A 2013 paper by a team of United Kingdom researchers found that a one-point jump in the scale they used to measure racism increased the odds of owning a gun by 50 percent. A 2016 study from the University of Illinois at Chicago found that racial resentment among whites fueled opposition to gun control. This drives political affiliations: A 2017 study in the Social Studies Quarterly found that gun owners had become 50 percent more likely to vote Republican since 1972 – and that gun culture had become strongly associated with explicit racism.
“For many conservative men, the gun feels like a force for order in a chaotic world, suggests a study published in December of last year. In a series of three experiments, Steven Shepherd and Aaron C. Kay asked hundreds of liberals and conservatives to imagine holding a handgun – and found that conservatives felt less risk and greater personal control than liberal counterparts.
“This wasn’t about familiarity with real-world guns – gun ownership and experience did not affect results. Instead, conservative attachment to guns was based entirely on ideology and emotions.”
(Jeremy Adam Smith. “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?” https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-are-white-men-stockpiling-guns/. Scientific American. March 14, 2018.)
Smith continues …
“That’s an insight echoed by another study published last year. Baylor University sociologists Paul Froese and F. Carson Mencken created a 'gun empowerment scale' designed to measure how a nationally representative sample of almost 600 owners felt about their weapons. Their study found that people at the highest level of their scale – the ones who felt most emotionally and morally attached to their guns – were 78 percent white and 65 percent male.
“'We found that white men who have experienced economic setbacks or worry about their economic futures are the group of owners most attached to their guns,' says Froese. 'Those with high attachment felt that having a gun made them a better and more respected member of their communities.'
“That wasn’t true for women and non-whites. In other words, they may have suffered setbacks – but women and people of color weren’t turning to guns to make themselves feel better. 'This suggests that these owners have other sources of meaning and coping when facing hard times,' notes Froese – often, religion. Indeed, Froese and Mencken found that religious faith seemed to put the brakes on white men’s attachment to guns.
“For these economically insecure, irreligious white men, 'the gun is a ubiquitous symbol of power and independence, two things white males are worried about,' says Froese. 'Guns, therefore, provide a way to regain their masculinity, which they perceive has been eroded by increasing economic impotency.'
“Unfortunately, the people most likely to be killed by the guns of white men aren’t the 'bad guys,' presumably criminals or terrorists. It’s themselves – and their families.
(Jeremy Adam Smith. “Why Are White Men Stockpiling Guns?” https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-are-white-men-stockpiling-guns/. Scientific American. March 14, 2018.)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, White men are also the people most likely to hurt themselves especially when they’re in some kind of economic distress. A white man is three times more likely to shoot himself than a black man – while the chances that a white man will be killed by a black man are extremely slight. Most murders and shoot-outs don’t happen between strangers. They unfold within social networks, among people of the same race.
Smith writes: “In addition, a gun in the home is far more likely to kill or wound the people who live there than is a burglar or serial killer. Most of the time, according to every single study that’s ever been done about interpersonal gun violence, the dead and wounded know the people who shot them. A gun in the home makes it five times more likely that a woman will be killed by her husband.”
Every week in America, 136 children and teenagers are shot—and more often than not, it’s a sibling, friend, parent, or relative who holds the gun. For every homicide deemed justified by the police, guns are used in 78 suicides. A study published in 2018 in JAMA Internal Medicine once again shows that restrictive gun laws don’t prevent white men from defending themselves and their families. Instead, those laws stop them from shooting themselves and each other.
Please, read Jeremy Adam Smith's entire article by clicking here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/why-are-white-men-stockpiling-guns/.
Conclusion
Since the days of early settlement of America, the propagation of the myth of the predatory Black man has been used to instill fear in whites and to justify their brutality and violence against Black individuals and communities The narrative has been passed down from one generation to the next and is still used to underwrite injustice against Black people.
White America has long associated black men with criminality and hypersexuality. The ghost of Nat Turner and his slave rebellion still haunts Whites today. It's why some social science experiments show that even trained police officers are biased to see black man as threats.
This fear of black men doesn’t just spring from racism. It’s also psychological. There is a body of work in literature and psychology that speaks to a historical tradition where some White people – White men, in particular – project the primal aggression that they refuse to see in themselves onto black people.
This is what author James Baldwin meant when he wrote in a 1962 essay that the racial tensions menacing America “are involved only symbolically with color.”
“These tensions are rooted in the very same depths as those from which love springs, or murder,” Baldwin wrote. “The white man’s unadmitted – and apparently, to him, unspeakable – private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro.”
(John Blake. “There’s one epidemic we may never find a vaccine for: fear of black men in public spaces.” CNN. May 27, 2020.)
And, let's face it – much of America remains segregated. Until something changes, Black men must learn to live with the fearful white gaze. Blacks with equal gun possession? Now, if you want to talk about “White fear” – just read the following:
“The Afro-American militant is a 'militant' because he defends himself, his family, his home, and his dignity. He does not introduce violence into a racist social system - the violence is already there, and has always been there.
“It is precisely this unchallenged violence that allows a racist social system to perpetuate itself. When people say that they are opposed to Negroes 'resorting to violence' what they really mean is that they are opposed to Negroes defending themselves and challenging the exclusive monopoly of violence practiced by white racists.”
(Robert F. Williams. Negroes with Guns. 1962)
“White fear has manifested itself in outright violence post-slavery through the imposition of Jim Crow segregation. White fear has manifested itself legislatively via redlining laws and cruel lending practices barring blacks from owning property in ‘white neighborhoods.’
“White fear has manifested itself in so many structural ways that it has become part and parcel with the fundamental functions of every private and governmental institution in this country …
“White fear is killing us …
“It is criminalizing black bodies. It is incarcerating black identities. It is limiting black potential …
“And, it is shooting black boys in the streets of their own neighborhoods. White fear is the single greatest cause of death for black people today and has been so since this country’s inception.”
(Jenn M. Jackson. “White Fear: The Single Greatest Killer of Black People in the US.” Water Cooler Convos. 2014. Accessed April 19, 2015.)
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