By Larry Keane
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.
SEE ALSO: Orlando Police Release Footage of Deadly Shootout During Traffic Stop
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 equating 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.
Larry Keane is Senior Vice President of Government and Public Affairs and General Counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.
Such desperation. They think their newspeak definition of racism is so effective. I can think of at least one thing worse than being an actual racist…
The arrogance of the leftist is rivaled only by their ignorance.
What a load of BS! What about some one like me, during slavery times my family was in Germany, so no history! This guy is as fake as the fake hair hanging down his back! Go home Brandon!
You can’t fix stupid. Don’t even try.
This commentator, Margaret O’Brian, is so far left. She soft pedals Liberal guests and constantly and rudely argues with Conservatives. I choose to go outside when she appears, to watch my prize bull make me some real money.
The 2A may be color-blind, but progressives aren’t…..biggest race-baiters in the history of mankind
“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” ― George Orwell, 1984
We like that “Freedom is slavery” part, let’s use that – American DemoSocialists, 2022
Unfortunately, asswipes like this boy, make statements that create racism! Don’t be that guy, asswipe
Joe Biden, Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama, Kamala Harris all trace back to slave holding bloodlines.
This is another fine example of a leftist piece of 💩. I’m pro slavery because there wasn’t nearly the crime in the black communities back then when slave owners (black, white and others) took care of and supported them. Now that they are free, we see that there is some truth to the fact that black people ain’t that smart, or at least they get caught more often, look at the jail population. Why are there so many more blacks incarcerated? It’s like that stupid commercial where a black guy admits to committing cres and in the next breath says he isn’t a criminal! See how utterly stupid that is? If you steel, committing Robbery, mayhem, rape and murder, you most certainly are a effing criminal and they should have executed you or cut off your hands to prevent you from being a detriment to society. If you commit crimes, YOU ARE A CRIMINAL, no ifs, ands or buts.
Honestly, how does one remain a ‘Professor’ with such a convoluted thought process?!?
Doesn’t higher education teach ‘Critical thinking’ ???
For example, if this were argued in a Court, he couldn’t possibly make such an argument without embarrassing himself,
There is NO guarantee of ‘safety’ in our Constitution, there is only that we have the freedom to establish the means for our own safety. And the Right to bear arms is both freedom, and safety.
Thats what the 2nd was really about. An armed human is a free human, slaves don’t get guns, nor do Subjects of any Governing person or body, and then when they do, they become free people.
To be disarmed is to be a slave.
This man is a fool to think or speak otherwise.
It’s easy to be a “professor”. The word only means the person “professes” knowledge in a particular subject. There’s no guarantee…
Perhaps if Kendi were to spend a few years in actual chains, he could come to understand the difference.
That suggestion is so “over-educated , stupid “ , comment is unnecessary .
One day, not in my lifetime, we’ll stop dividing ourselves based on ethnicity.
It will never happen, the left sees racism in everything, they live to play that card over and over again.
Umm, nope. The reality is that the “wolf-pack”…..“tribalism”…..”nationalism” and so on and so forth, have all existed since the very beginning. They will continue until animal-kind ceases to exist on the face of earth. It is an animal’s nature to band together in this way.
People kill each other over different bandanna’s colors, there are 5 Billion mini Frankensteins walking the earth. Right now you are still one of them.
ERRRRR……isn’t slavery forcing people to do your bidding against their will……the masses are speaking (criminals included) that gun ownership is a necessity! So you mr Ibram X. Kendi are actually the one promoting slavery!!!