The thing that I can't wrap my head around when it comes to the people who are clinging to the statistics argument (still) is...that argument works retroactively. Because the technology behind "gun handling" is safer today than it was in the past. Access to responsible gun safety training is also more available today than it was in the past. So if your argument today is that Black people (especially Black people, going by this thread), shouldn't buy guns because owning guns is inherently unsafe...then that argument logically extends to "Black people should never have owned guns, because owning guns and having a gun in the home has
always been unsafe."
Which then begs the question, do you think Black people have historically never had reason to take up arms in this country? That Black people have never needed the means to protect themselves specifically from oppressive racial violence? Because the history is there.
There are the massacres (here's a
handy-dandy Top 10 List, complete with images and body counts).
Then there are the isolated incidents we hear about, like
Emmit Till, which only serves as the historical example for the untold number of Black people who have fallen to white, racist, vigilante "justice" who will never be named.
The thousands of lynched Black people during the Jim Crow era.
The existence of the Black Panther Party, period.
And all the racist white militias that exist today in all 50 states.
And when you look into this history (especially the riots and massacres), you can see a through line: how much worse the violence perpetrated against Black people would have been if Black people had not begun arming themselves.
So, when I see people equating Black people arming themselves in defense to white power fantasies, or blanketing themselves in statistics, I can't help but think you either don't know the history, are choosing to ignore it, or believe that we live in some version of a post racial society where Black people don't have to worry about violence of this scale being perpetrated against them. Which...I wish I could be that naive.
And this is where the statistics argument fails. When it comes to the racial violence in this county, those statistics are often colorblind. They don't address the "preventative" aspects of Black people owning guns. It promotes some false sense of mutual disarmament (which would be great!), but fails to address the realities of American society, where white supremacists have been encouraged to stockpile weapons and have been encouraged to enact racial violence.
I have to say, words cannot truly express how profoundly disappointing this thread has been. We are on page 8 of people talking down to Black folks, infantilizing us, condescending to us, as though the reason Black people have felt moved to purchase guns in the light of EVERYTHING. WE. ARE. SEEING. is that we just don't know that guns are unsafe.
No shit.
Black folks, we are really on our own.
www.hsph.harvard.edu
