African American views on gun control.

[Uncle Joe]

African-Americans still favor gun control, but views are shifting

While it’s not yet clear what effect, if any, the church shooting in Charleston will have on gun purchases, a growing number of African-Americans across the United States have changed their position on firearms in recent years, breaking with a long tradition of gun control advocacy among blacks and embracing the kind of pro-gun positions that are more widely held by whites.

To be sure, attitudes toward guns are still deeply divided along racial lines, with 60 percent of blacks prioritizing controls on gun ownership over protecting gun rights, while 61 percent of whites say they consider gun rights more important than gun controls, according to a December poll by the Pew Reserch Center.

But the level of African American support for gun control has fallen by 14 percentage points since 1993, when it stood at 74% according to the Pew data.

During that same period, the number of blacks prioritizing gun rights over stricter gun controls nearly doubled, up to 34 percent in December from 18 percent in 1993.

(snip)

The idea that guns provide protection appears to be quickly gaining currency among American blacks. In December, 54 percent of blacks polled by Pew said they believed guns were more likely to protect people than to put their safety at risk. That figure was up from 29 percent two years earlier. For whites, 62 percent said guns protect people, up from 54 percent in 2012.

Pew conducted the poll last year shortly after decisions clearing police officers in the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, and the timing may have had an effect on the black response, said Carroll Doherty, director of political research.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/15/us-africanamerican-guns-idUSKCN0PP2N320150715

Roy Innis knows this all too well. Two of his sons were killed with illegal guns, one in Harlem, and one in the South Bronx.

Innis is the national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), one of the oldest civil rights organizations. He considers the NRA a civil rights organization too, which is why he sits on its board.

(snip)

It's a striking trend, particularly since the black leadership has traditionally led the charge for gun control. The National Urban League is a member of The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, and few organizations have put as much legal muscle behind the gun control fight as the NAACP. African-Americans are also less than half as likely as whites to own a gun, and they're far more likely to prioritize gun control over gun rights.

But while African-Americans on either side of the debate agree gun violence is a scourge in the inner-city, they disagree on another vital fact: whether gun control hurts more than it helps.

(snip)

Armed self-defense had a critical role in the civil rights movement. In certain southern states, black-armed groups would guard voter drives and the homes of civil rights leaders. In her landmark reports on lynching, Ida B. Wells, a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women, wrote, "a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every Black home" for the "protection which the law refuses to give."

When Rosa Parks and her husband began organizing activist meetings in their home, she claims she had no place to put the refreshments "with the table so covered with guns." Even Martin Luther King, Jr. applied for a concealed firearm permit, after his house was firebombed.

This tradition has shaped the politics of many black gun rights advocates. Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said her defense of the second amendment is rooted in memories of growing up in Birmingham, Ala., when her father and his friends would guard their streets against white terror groups.

(snip)

This line holds a clue as to why black pro-gun voices are so marginal today. In the 1970s, black arguments for armed self-defense were often confused with calls for black violence. In response, civil rights groups like the NAACP distanced themselves from the pro-gun wing of the movement to gain wider support with whites, according to Nicholas Johnson, a professor at Fordham University School of Law, who's writing a book on the black tradition of gun ownership.

The strategy worked, he says. And when those groups found a home in the Democratic Party, they ditched the pro-gun talk altogether. Today, race beats gender, age, geography, and politics as the most powerful predictor of whether an American owns a gun.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/gun-control-debate-amongst-african-american_n_2900166.html

The second article is from 2013, the first article is from July after the Charleston Church massacre but they're both well worth reading.

[HassleCat]

1. Another factor

In some places, gun control laws were part of Jim Crow.

[Uncle Joe]

3. And even today.

It's already much harder to buy a gun legally in many black communities. In Chicago, for example, gun stores are banned, as are assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. In Washington D.C., all guns must be registered, and it's almost always illegal to carry a firearm.

But violence in the poorest parts of these cities remains stubbornly high. Gun control proponents say the laws are too limited, while gun rights advocates claim they've only further concentrated guns in the hands of criminals. Innis believes one of his children could have been saved, if an armed good Samaritan had been standing by.

"The only thing that's going to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun," says Micheal Cargill, a black gun shop owner in Austin, Tex., who only applied for a concealed gun license after his grandmother, who decided to get a nursing degree at the age of 70, was mugged and raped on the way home from the library. Cargill said he faced hostility from friends and neighbors when he started his business. "It's not typical in the African American community," he said. "It's something frowned upon."

The need for self-defense is often felt more acutely in neighborhoods, where there's the sense that the police will take a long time to come, or may not come at all.



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/gun-control-debate-amongst-african-american_n_2900166.html

[WillyT]

4. Yep... Where's The NRA's Push To Arm All African-Americans ???

You'd get gun control then...

You'd see White Flight (from the NRA) in overdrive.

[HerbChestnut]

2. That's sad.

Our cities are getting out of control. And I think it's ironic that between African Americans and stereotypical gun nuts who live and die by the 2nd amendment, it's the folks living in cities that actually need guns for protection.

[Uncle Joe]

5. I certainly don't have all the answers but it's a complicated issue and for the record I don't

own any guns.

[Hoyt]

6. So the fact white yahoos have armed up for years is prompting Blacks to arm up.

That's sad, but I have long felt the reason most whites love their gunz is founded in racism. And, it's hard to blame folks for protecting themselves from armed racists.

[Uncle Joe]

7. I've never felt the need to own a gun but I don't blame the people for wanting to do so. n/t

[Hoyt]

8. Depends on why, how many, and if they carry in public, IMO. We have too many Zimmermans.n/t

[Uncle Joe]

9. Zimmermans, Roofs and a multitude of others. n/t

[Hoyt]

10. +1. n/t

[pipoman]

11. Yeah....that's it.....it isn't that their communities and neighborhoods

Are war zones...that couldn't be it....

[Number23]

12. Wow.

For posterity:

Yeah....that's it.....it isn't that their communities and neighborhoods

Are war zones...that couldn't be it....

Again... wow.

[pipoman]

13. pretending it ain't so?

Or worse yet...pretending #6 isn't a ridiculous crock of shit?

[Number23]

14. Yeah, I'm sure your numerous years spent living in black neighborhoods fully qualifies you

to call all of our neighborhoods "war zones."

And not only do I fully agree with post #6 but it doesn't surprise me in the least that you don't.

[Major Hogwash]

15. Absolutely.

As if none of us have watched the news.

[Number23]

16. And I love the double down from second parties.

Major Hogwash Absolutely.

As if none of us have watched the news.

Love it. Please proceed.