Leftists Don’t Like Gun-Rights Groups Urging Blacks and Latinos to Exercise Their Second Amendment Right

The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to keep and bear arms to Americans without regard to race, sex, or creed. Maj Toure, Colion Noir, and Antonia Okafor are black gun-rights advocates who believe that more black Americans should own guns for self-defense and learn to use them safely.

Toure, founder of Black Guns Matter, stresses the importance of self-defense and gun safety in black communities. His goal is to change the perception of guns within the black community: that a person who has a gun is either a criminal or a cop.

Noir, who used to work for the NRA, argues that gun control won’t fix the inner cities. Leftist politicians use the issue as a distraction, because it’s more advantageous “to have a dependent constituency, than a thriving autonomous community [that] doesn’t rely on the government for [its] well-being because they have the conditions and opportunities necessary to succeed.”

Okafor, a former Obama voter, came to prominence for advocating the right to carry her gun on campus after being stalked. She wrote in the New York Times that “from the minute I put my hands around a Ruger LC9 pistol, the gun I regularly carry with me now, I felt more in control. I felt empowered to be holding a tool that could protect me physically, and I was determined to learn how to use it responsibly. It was a relief to know that I could shoot if I had to, even though I would never use my gun unless it was a last means of self-defense. I got my concealed carry license a year ago.”

Toure, Noir, and Okafor were cited as examples in a new report by the Violence Policy Center (VPC) that criticizes the gun industry and gun-rights lobby groups. The VPC doesn’t like these organizations “targeting” blacks and Latinos and encouraging them to own guns. Townhall wrote about the report:

“In its marketing efforts to communities of color, the gun industry frequently focuses on the self-defense use of firearms, despite the fact that guns are rarely used to stop crimes or kill criminals and are far more likely to be used in homicides, suicides, or fatal unintentional shootings,” the report stated. “Recognizing that Blacks and Latinos are already disproportionately impacted by lethal gun violence, these efforts can only increase death and injury in these communities.”

The VPC said the gun industry is marketing to these groups because its traditional base, white men, is “aging and dying off.” Townhall considers the author’s theories about why pro-gun groups seek out blacks and Latinos racist.

VPC also claims that the firearm industry is “exploiting crises (real and perceived),” like COVID-19 pandemic and anti-police riots.

The VPC implies that advocating gun ownership for minorities is a political move. Isn’t everything political? The government has a long history of disarming black Americans, and its gun-grabbing efforts today are no different. While blacks are disproportionately perpetrators of gun violence, they are also disproportionately victims. The criminals will always have guns, while the victims would be defenseless.

To leftists, urging blacks and Latinos to exercise their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is cynical and exploitive, while urging them to see racism everywhere and demand race-based preferential treatment is viewed as a just cause.

Photo credit: By Joshuashearn – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons