Black Gun Owners in Texas Decry Racial Bias
Mark Hughes, wearing a camouflage shirt and legally, openly carrying an AR-15 rifle, was among dozens of black people in downtown Dallas on Thursday evening who were peacefully protesting against the recent back-to-back officer-involved killings of two black men.
But in the hours between when Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire on Dallas police officers and his death, Hughes found himself at the center of controversy when the Dallas Police Department circulated a photo of him on social media and referred to him as a "suspect" in the attack.
Police later retracted their initial assertions and deleted the photo after determining that Hughes had nothing to do with the attack that killed five police officers and injured seven other people, but their methods have sparked controversy among black gun owners who say they're discriminated against for exercising their constitutional right to bear arms.
“This is how they treat black men with guns,” said Babu Omowale, cofounder of the Dallas-based Huey P. Newton Gun Club, of the hunt for Hughes. “I was actually at the protest. I saw the brother with his gun, and it didn’t alarm me in any type of way because to me, he’s another brother expressing his Second Amendment right. But the police automatically view him as a suspect. But that’s how they view us — as suspects. They view us as possible criminals when we’re only applying our given rights as gun owners."
Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2016/07/09/texas-black-gun-owners-decry-racial-bias/
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