U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- If Boston University anti-racism professor and anti-racist activist Ibram X. Kendi is to be believed, millions of new first-time African American gun owners support slavery. That includes huge numbers of African American women, the fastest growing membership demographic within the National African American Gun Association (NAAGA) over the past two years.
Kendi joined CBS’s Face the Nation and somehow equated support for the Secondment Amendment and supporting the freedom to own a firearm with supporting the “freedom to enslave” people.
“There are people who are fighting for freedom – freedom from assault rifles, freedom from poverty, freedom from exploitation,” Kendi told show host Margaret Brennan. “And there are others who are fighting for freedom to exploit – freedom to have guns, freedom to maintain inequality.”
Kendi’s estimation is that if someone supports gun ownership, they also support exploiting people. Got it. There was no follow-up or pushback from Brennan.
Recent History
Over the last 30 months or so, law-abiding Black Americans have been among the most likely to embrace the Second Amendment and take up lawful firearm ownership. NSSF data showed that African Americans purchased firearms at a rate of 58 percent more in 2020 than they did in 2019. It wasn’t just Black gun buyers either. During the same span, 49 percent more Hispanic Americans purchased firearms and the rate was 43 percent more for Asian Americans. Since 2020, more than 14 million first-time buyers have lawfully purchased a firearm making the gun-owning community the most diverse it’s ever been.
NAAGA Founder and President Philip Smith saw it coming even further back. He started his group in 2015 but noted recently he’s seen “an awakening” among African Americans and their interest in the Second Amendment.
“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,” Smith added.
He also owns several firearms, including more than one Modern Sporting Rifle (MSR), or the so-called “assault weapon” Kendi described.
Far from the “old white man” caricature often portrayed in a media that is generally pro-gun control and antigun, Pew Research tells a different story. A truer one. While 36 percent of white Americans freely reveal they are gun owners, 24 percent of African Americans and 15 percent of Hispanic Americans say so too, likely under-reporting gun ownership figures.
Professor Kendi may be disappointed to learn that a simple Google search of “Changing face of American gun owner” returns no shortage of fact-based reporting on who exactly is embracing the Second Amendment. It is not Americans seeking to “exploit” and “enslave.”
Empowerment Over Exploitation
NAAGA’s Smith has revealed his national pro-Second Amendment group has nearly 50,000 members and has gained 1,000 or more new members each month since 2020. One of those members is Zhe Parson of Petersburgh, Va.
Parson’s father, grandfather and uncles were all gun owners and they helped teach her safe and proper gun use. She owns three guns today and encourages her girlfriends to learn about gun ownership.
“A lot of people of color don’t necessarily want firearms in their possession or anywhere near their children or their family because of fear something could happen,” Parson told media. “A lot of that is about not knowing about gun safety. But the numbers are going up because of one thing: Black people, Black women included, want to protect themselves.”
Kendi gets plenty wrong in his analysis and equates being pro-Second Amendment with being pro-enslavement, as he terms it. He ignores the thorough history of Black gun ownership in America and African American support for that God-given right. The NAAGA website highlights the pro-gun rights struggles of the Black Panthers, the Tuskegee Airmen, Harriet Tubman, and more.
In his op-ed in The Hill, law professor Jonathon Turley points out the numerous flaws in the “Second Amendment is racist” argument. Kendi and those sharing his views get it wrong, Turley writes, and how far too often, their theories are, “not challenged on the Second Amendment’s history or purpose, despite overwhelming (and largely ignored) evidence to the contrary.”
The Second Amendment is colorblind and is for all law-abiding Americans, no matter one’s race, gender or creed. Recent history shows us African Americans are exercising their right to own a gun. They are choosing empowerment over-exploitation no matter what Prof. Kendi believes.
About The National Shooting Sports Foundation
NSSF is the trade association for the firearm industry. Its mission is to promote, protect and preserve hunting and shooting sports. Formed in 1961, NSSF has a membership of thousands of manufacturers, distributors, firearm retailers, shooting ranges, sportsmen’s organizations, and publishers nationwide. For more information, visit nssf.org
I’ll probably be saying this for the rest of my life: The bane of effective gun rights advocacy is that you come smack damn against idiots and fools who, not only are ignorant of facts about guns, but refuse to listen. They’re so ingrained with one hysterical view that they’re all but impenetrable. The only similar mindset that I can recall is from the era when racism was an accepted norm.
Prof Kendi needs to have a sit down with Maj Toure…
I have not commented on this site for a long time. However, I would be remiss if I did not point out that Gun Control in this country has racist roots and continues to be racist in its application. Gun Control started in this country with the South’s Black Codes. It was in response to the fear of slave revolts, especially after the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831 in Virginia. This carried over in the Jim Crow South after the Civil War. During the so-called enlighten 1960’s Gun Control was still unfairly applied toward blacks with public housing projects, mainly… Read more »
As I quoted before:
“Liberalism is a mental disorder”.
-Michael Savage
The Progressive New Left is historically blinded because it’s predecessor, the Progressive Movement essentially wrote. black Americans out of American history. Thanks to racist progressives like Woodrow Wilson (Princeton) and many others the freemen who fought in our revolution and after were deleted from history books as were prominent black intellectuals. As a result the Progressive New Left was weened on a false Vision of black history in America. But no matter. The truth is a stranger to both the Progressive Movement as well as its red diaper doper baby spawn, the Progressive New Left. They intentionally and often unwittingly… Read more »
100% wrong. Slavery is impossible with universal ownership by honest citizens.
Russn8R
I agree the NSSF been stabling.
Small and non dealers in the back for a long time.
Back in the 80’s and 90’s it was their push to get rid of so call kitchen table or non-stocking dealers.
They would love a monopoly of just large stores and dealers.
The tend to believe Kissing butt with the government well save them.
Every Gun Rights Group’s official position on The Big Sellout: “OPPOSE”.
NSSF on The Big Sellout: “NO POSITION”.
NSSF on ATF: “Our federal partners”
NSSF: Quisling Gun Group Of The Year
Larry Keane: Head Quisling, NSSF
$100 says NSSF helped write the “compromise” to F over private sellers for the big dealers & distributors they rep!
Kendi told show host Margaret Brennan. “And there are others who are fighting for freedom to exploit – freedom to have guns, freedom to maintain inequality.” Notice that he feels that people that choose to have guns are racist and that they want to have guns to promote inequality. This is the mind set of someone who feels that things are not equal and wants to right a wrong and the only answer it so get rid of all the guns and then people won’t be racist anymore or have the power to force people to bow to their will.… Read more »
No one can seriously debate the fact that African Americans were denied their full enfranchisement after the Civil War nor can anyone deny the Original Sin of slavery imposed on America by European colonial powers. The Progressive New Left and previously the Progressive answer to this historical problem is not not to increase the liberty of blacks but to diminish liberty for all as the great equalizer. Equality of outcome became the mantra at the expense of equality of opportunity. Affirmative action programs typify this kind of thinking. On the inverse side lack of progressive investment in inner city schools… Read more »
The democrats want to impose a neo-feudalism on America and the world. They want to make us serfs and peasants with them the ruling lords. The Clinton’s were into this, but it started with Wilson and the progressives. Wilson was big on world government, i.e., the League of Nations. Wilson hated the U.S. Constitution, which limits the federal government. FDR tried to circumvent the Constitution with his New Deal nonsense, which prolonged the Great Depression. But not to miss a trick, he started the United Nations, first as a war-time alliance, then as some sort of world governing body. David… Read more »
I find it really hard to enslave armed people.
They seem to object violently to the idea of being made slaves.
Ibram X. Kendi don’t sound like one o’ them Judeo or Christian names. Must be fighting for freedom from resistance, you know, like when “mostly peaceful” chimps try to Burn-Loot-Murder, or his “Religion of Peace” pals try to saw off someone’s head. I can see how they would be outraged and it would feel like “slavery” if they can no longer rely on their victims being defenseless.
Gotta love it: Last week NSSF betrays us, now they pretend to be hard-core 2A
Who are these wackos and who let them infiltrate and indoctrinate? Anyone who knows accurate history is aware that only the unarmed are subject to slavery and oppression.
True. Isn’t it sad how few actually know any of their own history?
“When they shall rise up against us we will crush them like insects, for they are less than that. They will be helpless to do anything for they will have no weapons” -The Secret Covenant…. anonymous
the native americans are still fighting, mostly in courts these days and are starting to gain ground down trodden is not defeated, soldier on
A LOT of this began during the Depression Era when the federal government abused it powers and restricted full auto firearm and other purchases due to the lack of the citizenry having adequate access to their legislators. In later years the education system was overthrown by the single citizen that didn’t want to pay a large portion of his property tax to schools if he didn’t have any children and so on… Meaning that an “Apportioned Tax” didn’t really take hold too well in this nation.
hard to believe a black man would spew this jim crow bs ,even MLK wanted a gun for self defense,funny how they twist the past
It’s really hard to figure out many young black men most the time.
And also young white men, red men, yellow men… and even purple men if there was such a thing. 🙂
“They must never know that color is an illusion; they must always think they are not equal…” -The Secret Covenant… anonymous
Yet young men of any stripe are an open book when compared to practically any woman.
Note – I’m guessing most women would say the opposite.