The sale of firearms to black Americans rose an astonishing 58% in 2020, and that growth is continuing. A recent survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) revealed that nearly every gun-store owner in the country has seen growth, especially among black, brown, and Asian-American customers.
One of them, Michael Moody, a black federal employee working in Washington, D.C., drove to Maryland to purchase a firearm and was surprised at the number of black customers in the store. He told NBC News:
You look at Buffalo [the May mass shooting at a grocery store there] and the feeling of “This could have been me” is there.
We could be the next target. And when it’s you, what are you going to do? Are you going to run and hide? Or are you going to be able to protect yourself? Protect your family?
I didn’t want a gun. I’m not a gun person. But this world has made me get one.
Next, he said, is one for his wife.
The surge is reflected in the growth of the National African American Gun Association (NAAGA). Started in 2015 by Philip Smith, the group has been adding more than 1,000 new members every month since 2020 and now has a membership approaching 50,000. On Facebook it enjoys more than 100,000 followers.
Americans are buying more than 20 million firearms every year, and almost 40% of them are first-time buyers. The reasons include fear that the Biden administration will be successful in passing more gun (people) control laws, including banning the sale, purchase, and possession of the most popular rifle in the country, the semi-automatic AR-15.
There’s also the fear that inflation will drive up the price of firearms (along with everything else) and that government pressure on gun manufacturers will reduce the available supply.
There’s the rising crime, mostly in anti-gun, Democrat-controlled cities. There’s the increasing sense of self-reliance that comes from owning and becoming familiar with a firearm.
And there’s a sense of camaraderie that’s encouraged by local gun clubs. One such is the Freedom Firearms & Safety Gun Club in Phoenix, where divorcee Onnie Brown now serves as vice president. The club’s co-founder Scott Dias said:
It only made sense to me that we should have someone in the forefront that’s a female … [female guests] feel more comfortable and they’re more motivated when they see other women and when they connect with other women.
Along the way, new black gun owners not only learn how to handle a firearm, but likely also learn some true black history concerning firearms. As The Trace pointed out:
Black Americans carried guns before the Founding Fathers gathered in secret to draft the Constitution.
They carried them during the Civil War and again afterward as members of the Buffalo Soldiers, established in 1866 as the nation’s first all-Black military regiments.
They carried them for protection after their emancipation from slavery, although the Black Codes of the Reconstruction Era tried to put a stop to that.
They carried them out West on what was then America’s frontier, in search of greater freedoms.
They carried them throughout the South to guard against white lynch mobs.
Later, they carried them to protect scions of the civil rights movement, including Martin Luther King Jr., who famously preached nonviolence; less well known is that King applied for, and was denied, a permit to carry a gun, and his Alabama home at one point held so many firearms it was described as “an arsenal.”
They’re also likely to learn that the Second Amendment is color-blind, and that the present resident of the White House is no friend of that amendment.
This is likely to have political implications. In the past the Democratic Party could bank on 90% of black voters supporting whomever they put up for president.
Now, however, that present resident is suffering from dismal approval ratings, dragging down that black support. According to a Marquette University Law School poll taken in April, Biden’s approval rating among blacks has dropped from 88% in July 2021 to 56%, a dizzying decline of 32 points.
The more all Americans — including blacks, browns, and Asian-Americans — exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, the more difficult it will be for tyrants, present administration included, to take them away.
