Just five years ago, less than a third of African-American families viewed gun ownership as a positive. The Pew Research Center reports that now nearly 60 percent of black families view gun ownership not only as a net positive, but as “necessary.”
What’s more, African-American women lead the way as a demographic obtaining concealed carry licensing. Imagine that: a core demographic has left the Democrat gun control plantation.
The New York Times wants to know why!
It wasn’t always this way — as recently as 2012, Pew had found that less than a third of black families saw gun ownership as a positive.
Philip Smith, the founder of the National African American Gun Association, says that politics — and police shootings such as the recent slaying of Philando Castile — have caused the sudden upswing in gun ownership. And, in his opinion, owning a gun is perhaps the only way that African-American men and women can truly protect themselves.
For once, The Times doesn’t inflict their anti-gun rights animus on a news story that reveals the truth about guns. Yes, but — Mr. Smith goes to Washington, casting aspersions on you-know-who.
“Regardless of what side you’re on, in the fabric of society right now, there’s an undertone, a tension that you see that groups you saw on the fringes 20 years ago are now in the open,” said Smith. “It seems to me it’s very cool to be a racist right now, it’s in fashion, it’s a trend.”
You might not be surprised that The Washington Post published a piece headlining that bit: ‘It seems cool to be racist now’: The rising profile of the black gun owner.
Anyway, whatever the reasons behind African-Americans’ gun rights reclamation, whether real or imagined, all Americans are welcome into the firearms fold.