Posted on 06/14/2022 4:49:57 PM PDT by grundle
A rise in hate crimes and anti-Black vitriol sparked a 58 percent increase in Black people purchasing firearms in 2020. The spike seems to have continued.
Philip Smith, founder and president of the National African American Gun Association.
Two days after a white man shot and killed 10 Black people in Buffalo last month, Michael Moody reversed his thinking about possessing a firearm. He had watched the aftermath of the carnage on the news, the anguish of the victims’ families, and decided he “needed a gun. Needed, not wanted,” he said.
After discussing it with his wife, Moody said he left his home in suburban Washington to buy a weapon. He quickly learned he wasn’t alone. He said he was “stunned” at the number of Black people standing in line at the gun shop in Maryland to make a similar purchase.
Through chatting with others while waiting, Moody said he learned “a lot of us have the same idea. It’s getting bad when someone specifically targets Black people to shoot. We have to be prepared to fight back. And you can’t survive bringing a knife to a gunfight.”
Moody’s sentiments represent one reason the sale of guns to Black Americans rose 58 percent in 2020 — the year George Floyd was murdered by a Minnesota police officer, sparking a nationwide social justice movement — according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association. It was the highest bump in gun sales of any ethnic group that year.
Further, in the first quarter of 2021, another NSSF report revealed 90 percent of gun retailers reported a general increase of Black customers, including an 87 percent increase among Black women.
“And you wonder why?” said Moody, who works for the federal government. “You look at Buffalo 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. Getting one for my wife next.”
The foundation said 40 percent of the overall gun sales in 2020 were to first-time gun purchasers. Black gun owners, old and new, say the rise is a byproduct primarily of a heightened fear they could be targeted like those in Buffalo or at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, when nine Black church members were killed by a white supremacist.
To that point, anti-Black hate crimes rose nearly 40 percent in 2020, the latest year available, according to FBI statistics. There were 2,755 reported incidents targeting Black people in the U.S. that year, the most besieged racial group by a large margin.
Two weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol in Washington, Destiny Hawkins, a divorced mother of one who lives near Atlanta, waited in line to purchase her first gun, a Glock 43. “It wasn’t the gun I wanted because their selection was so low; people were buying guns like crazy,” she said.
“But seeing those people climb the walls and attack the Capitol — on top of all the other shootings of Black people — just confirmed why I stood in the cold and got my firearm. The bottom line is that we have to protect ourselves and our homes. But we purchase guns differently,” Hawkins said, stressing the sense that more Black people are buying guns for the sake of protection against racial attacks. “I drove a long way to take safety classes,” she added. “I went to the range.”
This increased interest in firearms delights Philip Smith, who started the National African American Gun Association in 2015. A human resources executive in Atlanta, Smith said he owns “about 30” weapons, including the lethal AR-15-style rifles used in the Buffalo mass shooting and the Uvalde elementary school massacre in Texas on May 24.
The increased number of Black gun ownership represents “an awakening,” Smith said. “It’s a value-add to their family household, as opposed to, let’s say, 10 years ago or six years ago. This is a movement in a certain direction, and I think it’s a good direction.”
His organization has 48,000 members nationwide, he said, and has gained more than 1,000 or more each month since 2020. It has nearly 107,000 followers on Facebook. Smith said the murder of Floyd, compounded by the myriad shootings of Black men and women by white police officers, vigilantes and the like, sparked the surge.
“There’s been a polarization racially and politically that’s driving that narrative for Black people purchasing guns for protection,” Smith said. “Folks are saying they don’t want to be out in public without a gun or they might end up like Ahmaud Arbery or Trayvon Martin or countless others who have been killed in the streets.
We all know why law-abiding blacks are arming themselves - against the criminal scum blacks.
Yeah, has nothing to do with black on black murders - accounting for 50-60% of all murders in USA.
It’s that vitriol, you see. The absence of proof of anti-black animus among the remainder of the population [beyond self-preservation] is inconsequential.
Once again you have the news media lying to us. Trying to have us think that black people need guns to protect themselves from White people. When in fact the truth is they need them to protect themselves from themselves.
This is the real reason massa’s trying to do away with the 2nd Amendment.
“It’s getting bad when someone specifically targets Black people to shoot”
Perhaps Mr. Moody should drop in to Chitown every weekend for a couple months.
The defund the police movement was what really caused gun purchases by black people to increase.
Take black on black murders out of the stats, the USA is as safe as Switzerland [with a machine gun in every home by law].
So under the theory that black people are mostly interested in their well-being like everyone else, are most often the victims of their racial underclass... they have decided to buy firearms?
Simply amazing (to racist reporters I guess).
“Folks are saying they don’t want to be out in public without a gun or they might end up like Ahmaud Arbery or Trayvon Martin or countless others who have been killed in the streets.
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Not exactly good characters that should be used as examples of while colored people need guns. Both of these characters were responsible for their own deaths.
IMO, best for urban defense.
Let me guess:
1. Soros’ DAs decriminalizing crime and emptying prisons of criminals
2. Democrat mayors and governors defunding police
Sleazy bastard lying race-baiters.
Why? Because they know wassup.
Not kidding.
Hardly any Blacks are killed by Whites in this nation.
Leave it to the MSM to find ONE story to tell, as opposed to
the literally thousands that could be told about Black on
Black or Black on White crime.
I support this guy buying a gun for himself, but enough of
the B. S., as if that was an everyday thing.
Nonsense!
Hardly any Blacks are killed by Whites in this nation.
Leave it to the MSM to find ONE story to tell, as opposed to
the literally thousands that could be told about Black on
Black or Black on White crime.
I support this guy buying a gun for himself, but enough of
the B. S., as if that was an everyday thing.
Nonsense!
Black men are the ones doing most of the murdering in America. Unfortunately most of their victims are other black men.
Law Enforcement is under no legal obligation to react. There may be a situations where bad shit is going down, and the cop may be hiding behind a car (Virginia Tech), waiting for SWAT to arrive... whatever.
There may be situations where Law Enforcement is over taxed or shut down, example NO LA with Katrina, or when the power went out in LA CA years past. Do you think if you lived in the areas where the riots were happening after Floyd, even if in no way a party to it all, that you would get help 50% of time if you called for it?
All this crap with little emergency call handles in parking lots of colleges etc. is BS. It makes some jackass pretend like he did something (that's what leadership is in America, showing action, even if it's retarded), but in reality he just threw away a lot of good money on an idea that is worthless in 90% of the situations. All that is good for is to tell the cops you've been stabbed 12 times and are bleeding out all over your clothes.
This is really just an issue of ones mentality. Those that are week, the sheep, they gravitate towards the idea of “others” protecting them. The sheep dog, the strong, they would rather have the means to defend themselves from the big bad wolf. It really is just that simple.
The problem is that today, the sheep want to tell the sheep dogs that they are bad and that they too need to be more sheepish. Sheepish is good, and anything that is football, MMA, boxing, guns, even knives or real knowledge about tactics etc. is baaa’aaad.
No one kept them from having firearms before.
No, they’re using them against criminal scum in their neighborhoods and against tyranny. In 2020 and 2021 when I went with new gun owners to get guns, most people waiting in line were black, Asian and women. These lines were 6 hours long so we had plenty of time to talk. They’re like you and me and they simply are buying guns to protect against radicals and scum on every level of society.
I do agree, the article is BS propaganda making it seem that @evil whites are arming for a war against blacks”. That’s more media decisive BS
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