California’s draconian gun-control regime, like most such regimes in America’s history, has a disproportionately negative effect on minority communities in the state.
The gun-buying spree of the last 18 months has forced some mainstream media outlets to finally cover African American gun owners, and the most recent installment suggests that residents of Oakland’s most at-risk neighborhoods can’t get the firearms they need to protect themselves.
“I always hear in the Black community that it’s hard for Black and brown (people) to get firearms,” Anthony Dart, a Bay Area firearms instructor, told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Dart estimates that he’s trained more than 400 people, and he specializes in serving the area’s Black community. But there are no gun stores in the city, and Dart’s attempts over the last three years to open one have been blocked by the state’s maze of regulations and fees. He also hasn’t been able to find a landlord to rent a storefront or a bank to float him a loan.
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“I tell them I want to open a gun store. They’re like, ‘Oh no, we don’t want this here,’” he said, referring to what he saw as resistance from all sides.
There’s a demand for what Dart wants to sell. Keisha Henderson told the Chronicle that many residents feel the need to protect themselves with firearms.
Henderson serves on the Neighborhood Crime Prevention Council, and she said her neighbors want to arm themselves for a variety of reasons. Some worry about slow police response as the smaller police force deals with rising homicide rates. Others are concerned about racially motivated attacks.
Unfortunately, even if those individuals are able to purchase a gun, they likely won’t be able to carry it outside their homes. The Chronicle reports that despite a sharp rise in applications for concealed carry permits, the approval rate dropped down to 17% in 2020 (down from 55% in 2019 and 30% so far this year).
SEE ALSO: Numbers Don’t Lie: Public Safety Concerns Driving Gun Sales
Many potential applicants appear to be scared away by the state’s “good cause” requirement, which allows local law enforcement to reject an application if the applicant cannot show a “good cause” to carry a firearm. Alameda County boasts a population of 1.7 million, but the county only received 162 concealed carry applications in 2020.
The lion’s share of approved applications has gone to residents in suburban communities of Livermore and Castro Valley. There are 107 active permits in these more affluent neighborhoods while Oakland city only has 29, according to the Chronicle.
Dart sees gun ownership as a civil rights issue and one that has life-or-death consequences in the city. When asked about a statue in his home of a warrior holding a severed head, he described part of his firearm self-defense “credo” as a zero-sum-game between the good and the bad.
“Either you fight and take off the other person’s head,” he said, “or you’re the one whose head is taken off.”
And yet they continue to blindly re-elect anti gun tyrants like Maxine Waters.
Hard for black and brown people to get guns?
Just ask a black kid and have money and you are packing.
Well the Taliban just took over Kabul, and the rest of the country btw! The first thing they did was take all the guns from the people. They did what the demorats are trying to do to us. They went to each home and said ‘give us your guns and your young daughters or we will kill you all’.
Makes you feel right at home don’t it.
I’m confused, we have ALL been told by the MSM that buying a gun is simple and easy.
No paperwork, no background checks, no problems.
So, the good people of Oakland can’t get a firearm as easy as the rest of this Country?!?!?!?!?!
Being unable to protect one’s self, family, and domicile is all part of the states’ and feds’ plan to control the masses and prevent them from rising up against a totalitarian regime. Do not let it happen in your state…
I hear the residents of Kabul are having a similar challenge.
God, what a great opportunity for the Mafia, or Drug Dealers to branch out into gun sales!!
I would have liked to see a photo of the sculpture
SuperG?
Are you suggesting that citizens need a reason to exercise their fundamental enumerated constitutional right to own a gun?
Because, that’s the same position as the folks at Giffords, CAGV, Everytown, The Mad Mommies, the Bradys, etc.
It’s the rationale behind the “good cause” requirements that keep people from carrying outside their front door.
It’s straight outta the gun ban playbook.
Who’s side are you on?
I grew up there, and I never saw any racially motivated attacks on blacks, though I imagine it did happen to a limited degree. But if you go by recent statistics from the DOJ, Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2018, you see that there were 547,948 attacks on whites by blacks, and 59,778 attacks on blacks by whites. So I don’t think the black residents of Oakland need to worry too much about racially motivated attacks on them.
The only issue with that database is its methodology is flawed…its based off opinions with no way to credential of respondents are telling an unbiased truth (and how that impacts standard of error) or their view of what is or is not a crime (also impacts error)…for instance if they aggressively approached a black person unprovoked (like we see alot of videos lately) and then got punched…they would report to this survey they were attacked but in reality they were the assaulting party…it also fails to address what percent of respondents come from predominantly black neighborhoods and the biases they carry against whites impacting perception of attack…did they view being followed around in a store for matching a description as an attack…it’s alot of holes in that survey that doesn’t control for biases and equitable population/respondent selection…did they have 80% more white respondents? Etc…