Patrik Jonsson, whose reporting on the gun issue has always been pretty fair, writes: “There’s evidence that black gun ownership has spiked since the 2016 campaign began. While white Americans have led the liberalization of gun laws in the past decade, black gun carry is becoming a test of constitutional agency.” Gun control historically targeted minority communities for disarming. It’s just now we’re nice enough proceed with a fiction that because the fees, the requirements that you have a squeaky clean record, and the high level of education required to comply with the patch work of laws and regulations apply to everyone, that means we don’t worry about disparate impacts on minority communities, even though we worry to death about that in every other context.
NRA should be very concerned that this movement is happening outside their umbrella, and adjust its rhetoric accordingly. At the very least, outreach and coordination with Black gun rights groups is in order.
No mention of two major landmark Second Amendment cases with black plaintiffs supported by NRA and SAF. No mention of the NRA’s full throated defense of Shaneen Allen. And while the article does mention that Michigan’s handgun licensing board has been “done away” with. The article never mentions NRA’s support and lobbying to dismantle the gun licensing board system.
No mention of NRA’s support for Maj Toure’s Black Guns Matter organization. Nothing about NRA’s promotion of black activists like Antonia Okafor
I guess that kind of thing doesn’t fit the narrative.
http://courts.delaware.gov/opinions/download.aspx?ID=202890
https://www.oyez.org/cases/2009/08-1521
The problem for blacks (or racial minorities in general) is not what “the law” says, per se. It is how the cop on the beat feels about it. Because the cop on the beat can make the average person’s (especially the poor, average person’s) life miserable if the cop doesn’t like them pursuing their rights. As a BLM member might point out (I’m guessing) it is against the law for a cop to shoot down an unarmed black man in the street, too, yet they do it all the time, and with impunity.
I have occasionally cited how Pennsylvania has always (in my lifetime, anyway) had legal open carry, but for most of my life we knew that if you tried it, at least in suburbia, you were going to get busted for something else. So the legal right was there, but in practical terms, don’t try it. It wasn’t until open carry became a popular “movement” that the letter-of-the-law has had a chance of prevailing.
Alas, NRA does not have a terribly great record in the “works and plays well with other gun rights groups” category. They’re going to have to work on that.
In my experience the NRA always took a “my way or the highway” approach to dealing with other groups, especially, state and local groups. If they had the power to just walk over locals rather than endeavor to persuade them, that is what they would do, and usually that was the case. They also did not countenance any pointed dissension within their own ranks. The politics of not turning what should be natural allies into implacable enemies for the future never seemed to occur to them. In short their tactics were always short-sighted.
However, I also found that to be a universal characteristic of the gun rights activist community in general. When there was a tactical disagreement, whoever thought they had the greater power would attack the dissenting faction. There was never considered an approach of, let’s agree to disagree, and perhaps turn our disagreement into a Good Cop/Bad Cop gambit to advance our cause.. It was always more important for factions to display their individual political primacy and influence.