Your Right to Own a Gun

For John, BLUF:  Civil Rights is more than just voting.  They can be about gun ownership.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Why Black Americans Are Buying More Guns

Here is the sub-headline:

The people who bear the brunt of rising violent crime are taking steps to protect themselves.

From The Wall Street Journal, by Jason L. Riley, 7 June 2022, 6:13 pm ET.

Here is the lede plus two:

“The issue we face is one of conscience and common sense.”  So said Joe Biden last week in a prime-time plea for more Second Amendment restrictions.  The president is right on both counts, just not in the way that he and other gun-control enthusiasts imagine.

Voters have noticed that cities where shootings occur almost daily also have some of the strictest gun laws.  Using common sense, they’ve concluded that more gun-control legislation probably isn’t the solution because criminals by definition don’t respect laws.  Many of the same people likewise find it unconscionable that elected officials would make it more difficult for law-abiding residents of high-crime neighborhoods to arm themselves for protection.

Someone might remind Mr. Biden that the past two landmark Supreme Court rulings on gun control were fueled by black plaintiffs who simply wanted to defend their homes and their families.  Moreover, they hailed from cities controlled by liberals who have done an extraordinarily bad job of protecting low-income minorities from criminals.  In a 2008 case, District of Columbia v. Heller, the court affirmed that the right to bear arms is an individual right and that you don’t need to be part of a militia to exercise it.  One of the initial plaintiffs was Shelly Parker, a black computer-software designer who decided to challenge the district’s handgun ban in court after a 7-foot-tall neighborhood drug dealer tried to break into her home one evening and threatened to kill her.  “What I want is simply to be able to own a handgun in my home, in the confines of the walls of my home—nothing else,” she told National Public Radio.

I suspect that we really don't know much about Blacks and guns and how for quite a while after the Civil War Caucasians of various stripes woked to deny Blacks their Constitutional Rights.

One wonders if Black on Black crime in big cities is a result of denying Black American their Second Amendment Rights?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff