Black Gun Owners: The Best Path to Gun Control?

That's not a rhetorical question.  I'm hear to tell you that I think the answer is yes.

I felt that way even before I saw this article in the Washington Post, about a post-Trump-election rise in the level of gun purchases by African-Americans, even as gun sales were falling among white purchasers.  The increased number of gun purchases during the Obama years among whites, and the subsequent increase in the level of armed violence against young African-American men (and the resulting fatalities), make the Post article the least surprising piece I've read in a long time.

And I'm happy that what the article reports is happening.

If history teaches us anything (and it can, frankly, teach us quite a lot if we're willing to admit that we need to learn), it's that periods of peace among nations, and among peoples within nations, depend on a balance of power.  The more evenly power, including and especially firepower, is distributed throughout a society, the lesser the temptation there is for one group to attempt to subjugate another. And, when you stop and think about it for a moment of two, isn't that the argument that gun rights advocates make in the first place?  That private ownership of guns by citizens is necessary to reduce the temptation governments might have otherwise to subjugate their own people by force?

Personally, I don't completely disagree with that argument.  I don't think that, Antonin Scalia notwithstanding, the Second Amendment was created for that reason, and I certainly don't think it requires every citizen to have an arsenal that could outfit an entire battalion of soldiers.  Actually, the Second Amendment is a tricky platform on which to build an argument for unlimited handgun or rifle ownership.  The Amendment only refers to "arms."  Well, then, don't I have a constitutional right to a nuclear arsenal?   Maybe that's what I need to feel really safe.

Frankly, when you consider the level, intensity and duration of white racism in this country against African-Americans, I'm surprised that there isn't more advocacy for an H-bomb in every black household.  However, if the Post article is a reasonable guide (probable), more conventional firearms seem to be good enough.

I mean, seriously, what is the white gun-owning community going to do?  Advocate for more stringent regulation of gun purchases?  Admit that the adoption of the Second Amendment had as much to do with the ability to hunt down runaway slaves as it did with militias?  Stand up and say "OK, you've got us.  We were flaming hypocrites all along.  Can you ever forgive us?"

I wouldn't bet on any of those alternatives becoming reality.  If the last one did, however, I would hope and expect the answer of the African-American community to be something like "No thanks, we'll just keep arming ourselves.  After all, it's good enough for you.  And we promise not to be trigger happy when your kids wear clothes we don't like."