Is Gun Control Black Control? Black Politics and Gun Violence in America
On February 17, 2016, Leah Wright Rigueur, Harvard Kennedy School Assistant Professor of Public Policy, hosted a conversation with Martha Biondi, Chair of the Department of African American Studies and Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University. The Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation sponsored the event as part of the Race and American Politics seminar series. This blog will articulate Professor Biondi’s research on how gun control and gun violence intersect with race and politics. Biondi also investigates whether gun control laws protect black lives or oppress them.
The Ash Center’s Race and American Politics Series is a multidisciplinary series of seminars and round-table conversations led by Leah Wright Rigueur. Co-sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research and Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy, the series features academic, practitioner, and journalistic perspectives from across the nation on the most pressing political and social issues related to race in the United States. Read other posts covering the Race and American Politics seminar series here.
By Michael Huggins
HOW GUNS TURN CITIES INTO WAR ZONES
A black man in North Philadelphia has a better chance of being killed than a soldier in Iraq. Among America’s cities, Philadelphia has one of the worst homicide rates in the United States. Firearms are involved in almost 80% of all homicides in Philadelphia, and black people make up 85% of the victims. Gun violence in the black community exists not only in Philadelphia, but it extends across the country. More than 5,000 people were killed in gun violence between 2001 and 2012; during that same period, 2,000 U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan.
In 1986, guns injured 365 children in Detroit. Between 1986 and 1988, gunshot wounds among children living in cities grew by 300%. From 1984 to 1987, the homicide rate for black men age 15 to 64 rose by 66%. Today black Americans are eight times as likely as white Americans to be homicide victims. But the focus of gun studies and articles often skips the black perspective on gun violence.
Professor Martha Biondi, Chair of the Department of African-American Studies at Northwestern University, expressed that “even when African-Americans are acknowledged as the victims of gun violence, the focus of many studies is a predominantly white gun control lobby and the white dominated gun rights lobby.” Biondi further asks, “how are African-American leaders, elected officials, clergy, journalists, and community activists responding to high rates of gun violence and mortality in black communities?” Is the proliferation of gun regulations (for and against) a solution to reduce violence in the black community?
Listen to the entire conversation on AshCast
BLACK OPINION ON THE GUN ISSUE
Many black leaders charge our nation’s original leaders with the creation of a violent America. Biondi commented that “armed militias stole land from the Native Americans and put down rebellion by enslaved Africans.” Some black leaders argue that the constitution sanctioned the deployment of armed white men against black and brown individuals. The sanction of these armed militias formed America’s gun culture. This culture remains deeply rooted in significant parts of rural, small town America.
It has also been argued that the proliferation of Stand Your Ground laws and American overreliance on guns have perpetuated the gun culture. One reaction to the high rates of gun homicide has been a call to regulate the sale and production of handguns. Eighty percent of black Americans support universal background checks for gun sales. But this call for background checks and gun regulation has not been the only proposed solution. Some have advocated for more self-defense in the black community.
Black Americans have engaged in self-defense against white vigilantes since the end of the Civil War and throughout the era of lynching. Professor Biondi illustrated how armed self-defense reemerged during the southern civil rights movement. She offered the example of how Martin Luther King, Jr., “the apostle of non-violence,” considered carrying a gun after receiving death threats against his family and home.
Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party also advocated for armed self-defense in the 1960’s and 1970’s with street patrols. Although the United States has traditionally supported gun rights, American politicians have not extended these same rights to black leaders and community members. Biondi posited that politicians only intend to give gun rights to those who are white.
Professors Leah Wright Rigueur and Martha Biondi
GUN CONTROL OR BLACK CONTROL?
In the late 1960’s, gun control laws were passed at both the federal and the state level. Biondi suggested that politicians designed these laws in response to the growing number of black citizens who decided to exercise their right to self-defense. In California, Gov. Ronald Reagan responded to the Black Panther patrols by endorsing laws restricting individuals from showing guns in public. Biondi also highlighted the passage of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, the first federal gun control law after large black uprisings occurred in New York and Detroit in 1967.
Shortly thereafter, the Gun Control Act of 1968 was passed to restrict Saturday night specials, where black youth could buy cheap guns. The National Rifle Association (NRA), the nation’s chief opponent to gun regulation, supported the Gun Control Act of 1968. According to Biondi, many believe Congress passed the Gun Control Act, “not to control guns, but to control blacks.” In the same year, Chicago passed a gun registration ordinance. Black Alderman Sammy Raynor called the law an attempt to control the guns of only black residents in the city. Biondi quoted Chicago activist Russ Meeks who denounced the law as “an excuse for white people to keep the Negros suppressed.”
As the black liberation movement started to decline, and unemployment rose in the 1970’s and 1980’s, the homicide rate in the black community sharply rose. The NRA’s support for the Gun Control Act of 1968 also disappeared. Congress even rescinded portions of the act to facilitate more gun sales across borders. Black residents stopped buying guns to demonstrate strength to white vigilantes. Instead, many residents started to buy guns to defend themselves from crime in the community.
Biondi’s research might suggest an explanation for the NRA’s lack of support for the Gun Control Act and the act’s disappearance: politicians enact gun control in cities to prevent black Americans from uniting against law enforcement or authoritative figures; but when black people begin killing each other with guns, politicians repeal those same gun control laws which facilitate death, destruction, and division in black communities.
In light of the increased homicide rate, black community organizations seek to emphasize non-carceral solutions to reduce gun violence in the black community. According to Professor Biondi, many have focused on demilitarizing the police and investing in jobs and resources for those in the black community. Biondi noted that the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has linked the fight to end gun violence with the “fight against police abuse and mass incarceration.” This discussion left the audience with a few important questions: how does race fuel the proliferation of gun control laws in America? Is homicide a form of social subjugation? Are gun rights even intended for black and brown Americans?
IF GUN CONTROL IS NOT THE SOLUTION, WHAT IS?
Homicides and gun violence continue to plague the black community in most major urban areas. But neither increasing nor decreasing the number of guns in cities will necessarily reduce violence because gun control laws and regulations treat black and white Americans differently. Police shot John Crawford III, a black man, in a Walmart because he was carrying a BB gun in Ohio, which is an open carry state. Marissa Alexander, a black woman from Florida, fired warning shots in the air to push back her abusive husband. She unsuccessfully claimed self-defense under Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law. Both Mr. Crawford and Ms. Alexander followed the law. Mr. Crawford had every right to carry a BB gun in the Walmart store; and the Stand Your Ground Law should have protected Ms. Alexander from an abusive spouse.
But state legislatures created those laws to benefit white Americans. These examples highlight Biondi’s point about who gun regulations and gun control laws benefit and who they hurt. We cannot rely on gun control laws or allowing more guns to reduce violence in the black community. Biondi challenged the audience to think of homicide as a form of “social control imposed on an expendable or disposable population.” Policy makers and black leaders should stop thinking of violence in the black community as black crime; instead, they should think of violence as a symptom of a structure designed to control black Americans and divide their communities.
Michael Huggins is an MPP1 at the Harvard Kennedy School, a law student at the University of Washington School of Law, and a Research Assistant for Professor Leah Wright Rigueur and the Ash Center’s Race and American Politics series. His interests include prisoners’ rights, the elimination of mass incarceration, and politics.
Originally published at www.challengestodemocracy.us.
