AP Photo/Lisa Marie Pane

Gun ownership is most common among white men, particularly those who live in rural areas and those who describe themselves as conservative, according to the Pew Research Center and other surveys. According to a 2015 report by the non-partisan research group NORC at the University of Chicago, 39% of white adults said they lived in a household with a firearm while 18% of Black adults did. But Thompson says Black Americans in 2020 are being driven to gun shops for different reasons than white Americans—most of whom buy guns for more than one purpose, including for protection but also for hunting and sport shooting, according to the Pew survey. “How many white men are going to have guns pulled on them while they’re jogging?” Thompson says. “It’s a world of difference.”

Philip Smith, president of the National African American Gun Association, agrees. Shortly after Floyd’s death, about 3,800 new members joined the group, which already has about 35,000 active members, Smith says. His association has seen a 15% increase in membership since the same time last year, with an average of 1,000 new members joining each month. Smith says about 80% of its new members this year are first-time gun owners. “We’ve never had enrollment like that,” he says, adding that social unrest pushed people to the tipping point and is likely to continue doing so.

“Although the election is over, there’s still a lot of tension out there,” Smith says. “You can almost taste it out there, the friction.”

– Melissa Chan in Racial Tensions in the U.S. Are Helping to Fuel a Rise in Black Gun Ownership

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62 COMMENTS

  1. Good. The more people who have a stake in maintaining gun rights, the better. Sure these new owners may not be 100% on the gun vote, but it can only help.

    • And now laws against Guns will be called racist. See how that works now. Can’t wait for all the new Gun laws. Let’s start this show

      • Maybe.
        As it is the left has no qualms about calling any minority who even looks over the fence of the Democrat plantation a white supremacist regardless of their pigment. They’re already attacking black and Hispanic males as the next iteration of oppression.

        No faster way to see those Klan roots come to the surface than to point out a minority that doesn’t buy the democrat line 100%. White liberals let those expletives and slurs fly at the slightest sign of party disloyalty.

      • RE: “And now laws against Guns will be called racist. See how that works now. Can’t wait for all the new Gun laws. Let’s start this show.”

        Thanks to the democRat Party that show began long ago…Gun Control is an agenda based in racism and genocide. Therefore Gun Control is a racist and nazi based agenda. If you do not know the history of Gun Control race baiting democRat sht like miner 49 I.Q. will walk all over you.

      • Gun laws already are racist and have been for a long time. Doesn’t matter to those who push for them.

  2. The failure of DemoCommie backed gun control,brought to America by the original party of racism and racist’s, they built it, they own it.

    • I grew up in a mixed politics family. My fathers side were all church going Republican Lutherans. They never used racial epithets and I never noticed any hatred of of other groups. My mother’s side of the family were all Democrats and never went to church. Guess which family were in the clan? I remember a picture of a flaming cross hanging in the hallway outside the bathroom and a hooded clansman figurine on the kitchen window sill. I also remember some pretty spirited political conversations, something I paid attention to, even as a child. I give my mother a lot of credit for rejecting all that hate and making sure that it didn’t continue for another generation in her children. I know why I’m a republican. I can’t understand why so may people who claim to believe in diversity and freedom and equality became democrats.

  3. The 2nd is for all Americans, or none. There is no in between, and color does NOT modify the truth of that statement. More Americans buying guns is a good thing. More black Americans buying guns is a joyful middle finger in the face of gun control, which came about as a means to keep guns out of black hands.

    • “The 2nd is for all Americans, or none. There is no in between, and color does NOT modify the truth of that statement. More Americans buying guns is a good thing. More black Americans buying guns is a joyful middle finger in the face of gun control, which came about as a means to keep guns out of black hands.”

      Quoted for truth !

    • No it will be portrayed as these poor blacks had to buy guns to protect themselves from all the racist whites who own guns. They were skeered of white racists

    • There is a reason for the brown shirts rampaging in urban neighborhoods. Who funds the left? bloomberg, gates, zuckerberg, etc. All rich white corporate Americans. Burn out mom and pop stores, many minority owned and it lessens competition. More bucks in the greedy corporate sponsors of the lefts pockets.

      One of the biggest lies in America is how the democrats are for the poor and working class. How many dems like biden have been lifetime pols and are now filthy rich?

      Hypocrisy, thy name is progressive.

      • Biden’s cokehead son probably gets more money even after giving dad his share each year than I will get in a lifetime.

        The Bidens are the epitome of “Champagne Socialists”.

  5. Given the Burning, Looting, and Murdering in urban areas across the country, no surprise that urban and suburban black folk are arming.

    Add the black-on-black crime stats from places like Chicago, Baltimore, and Camden for even more motivation.

    When I take office I am going to push to make firearms training accessible at low-or- no cost nationwide.

  7. Informed self-defense may be the only option available to the black community, given the systemic racism of the current law-enforcement and judicial system, especially in states like Georgia.

    An update to the Ahmaud Arbery case, the corrupt Republican prosecutor lost her bid for reelection, due in great part to her mishandling and favoritism in ignoring the Arbery case.

    “Shortly after the shooting, Gregory McMichael called Johnson, his former boss, from the crime scene, a Georgia prosecutor said at a bond hearing on Nov. 13.
    “Jackie, this is Greg,” the elder McMichael is heard saying in the voicemail. “Could you call me as soon as you possibly can? My (inaudible) and I been involved in a shooting and I need some advice right away. Could you please call me, as soon as you possibly can? Thanks. Bye.”
    Johnson asked a district attorney in another circuit, Waycross DA George Barnhill, to come advise police the day after Arbery’s death. In doing so, she ignored state guidelines on handling conflicts of interest, according to the AJC. The guidelines stipulate that she should have immediately turned the case over to Georgia’s attorney general.
    Instead, the AJC reported, Johnson waited three days after the shooting before disclosing her conflict to the attorney general, by which time Barnhill had formed an opinion about the case.
    In an October 20 campaign debate, Johnson pushed back on criticisms that her office acted inappropriately.
    “We did what we were supposed to,” she said. “The lack of trust has been the result of people with an agenda who have exploited this case and divided our community for their own purposes.”
    The attorney general’s office appointed Barnhill as the prosecutor in the Arbery case.
    Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arbery’s mother, told CNN this week that after she spoke to Barnhill on the phone, she looked at his Facebook profile and discovered he was “friends” with Gregory McMichael and Jackie Johnson. She said she also came across a profile of someone with the last name of Barnhill who worked in Johnson’s office.
    Cooper-Jones said she raised concerns about the apparent conflict of interest to the victim advocate in Barnhill’s office as well as the state attorney general’s office.
    Eventually, Barnhill ended up recusing himself too, revealing to the attorney general’s office on April 7 that his son was a prosecutor in the Brunswick Judicial Circuit DA’s office and once worked with Gregory McMichael in a previous prosecution of Arbery.
    Ahmaud Arbery’s aunt Theawanza Brooks, center left, joins family members and supporters for a march in Glynn County on May 16 after a rally to protest his shooting.
    Ahmaud Arbery’s aunt Theawanza Brooks, center left, joins family members and supporters for a march in Glynn County on May 16 after a rally to protest his shooting.
    Before he did, Barnhill wrote in a letter to police that he believed the McMichaels were within their rights to execute a citizen’s arrest of Arbery, adding that Travis McMichael would have been allowed to use “deadly force” to protect himself as he and Arbery struggled over a shotgun.
    “I often sit back down and think back that I didn’t really realize how bad this case was,” Cooper-Jones said. “… People were getting ready to actually justify the killing of Ahmaud and close the case, but I just thank God that I was able to stay on it, make phone calls and God was on our side.”
    Barnhill’s office has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
    The state attorney general’s office said it was not aware of the connection when it appointed Barnhill.”

  10. “How many white men are going to have guns pulled on them while they’re jogging?”

    All of them, if they go jogging in the ‘hood.

    • Or white people who go to “The Hood” to buy drugs. Instead of opening up a cocaine or heroin selling business in white middle-class neighborhoods. So white users don’t have to travel to the “dangerous black” part of town to buy their drugs.

      • kind of like what’s happening in my backyard…one side of the river is “wholesale”…the other…somewhat safer side.. is “retail”….

  12. And? The 2A has been for everyone forever at least forever in these peoples lives. All “woke” now. Welcome To The Party Pal

  13. Given that a disproportionate amount of ‘gun violence’ is driven by this demographic, this isn’t all upside.

  14. I prefer my guns to be a deep blue finish such as old Smith & Wesson. Bummer of it is that has gone the way of the Doo Doo bird on mass produced guns.

    So yeah, since modernizing my collection, the number of black guns I own has increased considerably.

    Oh well.

    • All those fine, deep blued guns of yours will look fantastic being crushed in a pile, after your done turning them in to my New Federal Racial and Equality Justice Force.

    • enuf…Obviously the world revolves around you,..at least you think so. I mean all those guns and stuff you bl;ow smoke about and then you turn around and slander and libel the POTUS. Then you pucker up and lint lick the entire Jim Crow Gun Control democRat Party. Get help enuf..mental help.

      • Heaven forbid that anyone show disloyalty by insulting Dear Leader’s fragile ego. Unamerican!!!

  15. One look at the FBI’s uniform crime statistics will tell you fear of death by law enforcement is only a boogie man. I support people buying guns, just don’t lie to yourself about who’s the most statistically significant threat to your life.

    • I was looking at that earlier today.

      Some of these 2020 election fraud issues will make it to the SCOTUS.

      • ersatz debbie…Grow some and stick to using your own moniker otherwise you are a gutless wonder like minor 49 I.Q, enuf et al.

      • they’ve got to make a case…not much more than allegations, so far…it may well have happened…but you’ve got to prove it….

      • Got to add a rant about racism, Nazis, and “democRats” if you want to look even halfway convincing.

    • I just read that article and it’s just some shill lawyer.

      “Trump won, I was there, and I’ll tell you how I know!”
      Then he goes on for a few paragraphs talking about knowing literally nothing as if that means he knows something. Absence of evidence is not evidence. Which is exactly why every court has thrown out this nonsense.

      None of it is a real argument. No one but fools believe it (the same fools that vote for a guy who managed to do more gun control in his one term than Obama did in two!). It’s all about playing the refs and trying to get more ‘funds.’

  20. Feel free to emigrate to any other country if you believe this one is so bad. Good luck, USA is the least racist country in the world.

    • Try Liberia, which was founded by freed slaves. Just ignore the decades long civil war.

      Or Rwanda, where half the population massacred the other half with gardening tools.

      They are not racist in Africa, with the exception of being against the melanine impoverished minority in the southern bit. Politics is usually on tribal lines and if you’re not in one tribe you will be automatically assumed you’re in the other.

      • Tribalism in Africa is racism though. The genetic divergence between any two given tribes in Africa is more extensive than between, say, Slavs and Anglos. It’s easily the equal of the difference between East Asians and Europeans. Evolution has had a long, long time to work on the inhabitants of Africa and they know that the next tribe over is a different race (i.e. subspecies, though it’s not goodthink to apply that term to the concept,) even if the rest of the world acts like they’re the same just because of their skin color.

        When two hillbilly clans in Appalachia make war with each other, that’s just tribalism. Hell, they’re probably more closely related to each other than to anyone else in the world. But in the vast gene pool of Africa with its indefinitely long history of population separation, a tribe is a race unto itself and tribal conflicts take place on those lines alone.

      • blacks in charge has often been a recipe for disaster…not universally true…but still quite common…

  21. The democRat Party runs Chicago, etc. and under privileged drug educated Black Youth who do not know the difference between The Second Amendment and a drive by are the victims of their own stupidity. It’s what happens when heads are filled with demoCrap. The democRat Party are the instigators and the sht heads are their useful idiots. The self serving democRat Party never takes responsibility. The party does what it always does…Blame everyone else.

  23. If ive said it once ive said it 1000 times. Blacks and Jews should be the largest gun owners by demographic. how they can look back at thier histories and say, “guns are evil” is shocking to me.

    • To some, being a victim gives them moral authority. The more they are a victim, the more moral authority they have.

  24. “…But Thompson says Black Americans in 2020 are being driven to gun shops for different reasons than white Americans—most of whom buy guns for more than one purpose, including for protection but also for hunting and sport shooting, according to the Pew survey. “How many white men are going to have guns pulled on them while they’re jogging?” Thompson says. “It’s a world of difference.”…”

    Who is “Thompson”?

    As for more black gun ownership, OUTSTANDING. The more legal gun owners, the better. Welcome to the fold!

  25. If you believe in human rights & freedom then you believe what the left has done to keep Blacks from their God Given right to gun ownership and self protection is a racist crime against humanity.

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