‘Gun Control Is Racist’: Black Gun Owners Celebrate Supreme Court Striking Down N.Y. Concealed-Carry Restriction

In the summer of 2020, with gun sales soaring amid the Covid-19 pandemic, rising big-city crime, and heightened racial tensions and rioting in the wake of George Floyd’s killing, Damon Finch said he and other black firearms instructors in New York’s Hudson Valley were inundated with requests from new gun owners in their community in need of education.

These new gun owners were looking for more than “just going to the range and pulling the trigger a bunch of times,” Finch said. They wanted to learn how to safely handle their weapons, how to legally travel with their guns, how to deal with police, and how to administer first aid if “God forbid I ever did have to pull that trigger,” he said. That surging interest in guns resulted in the creation of the Hudson Valley Nubian Gun Club, that today is made up of about 300 black gun-owners and Second Amendment enthusiasts in the region directly north of New York City.

Finch, an Air Force veteran and a firearms instructor for over 20 years who co-founded the gun club, sees the increasing appreciation in the black community of guns for self-defense and for use in shooting sports as a positive thing. But he said New York’s law – struck down by the Supreme Court last week – that required concealed-carry applicants to “demonstrate a special need” to be armed outside of their homes was a particular burden on black gun owners.

The judges who approved or denied permits weren’t consistent; the wealthy and politically connected were far more likely to get their permits approved, he said. “That judge generally isn’t from that community and doesn’t understand the intricacies of that community,” he said.
“I’ve seen people denied because they’ve had too many police encounters – have not been convicted, but the fact that they’ve been arrested or questioned too many times by police in their lifetime. And part of being a person of color, that’s just a Thursday.”

In a statement after the 6–3 ruling in the case of New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Legal Aid Society agreed that the state’s licensing regulations “have been arbitrarily and discriminatorily applied, disproportionately ensnaring the people we represent, the majority of whom are from communities of color, in the criminal legal system.” The organization called the ruling “an affirmative step toward ending arbitrary licensing standards that have inhibited lawful Black and Brown gun ownership in New York.”

The ruling, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, states that “nothing in the Second Amendment’s text draws a home/public distinction with respect to the right to keep and bear arms,” and that the “definition of ‘bear’ naturally encompasses public carry.” Thomas explained that “the constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees.’”

While the ruling just addressed New York’s law, several other states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, will likely have to rewrite their own concealed-carry laws. New York governor Kathy Hochul, in a televised address Thursday, had no trouble finding adjectives – “shocking,” “reckless,” “reprehensible” – to describe the ruling.

“We do not need people entering our subways, our restaurants, our movie theaters, with concealed weapons,” she said. “We don’t need more guns on the streets.”

Paul Adell Jr., co-founder and president of the Rochester African American Firearms Association, countered that the violence that concerns Hochul and other gun-control advocates “has nothing to do with the gun, and a lot to do with the person.” He agreed that New York’s concealed-carry law disproportionately impacted minorities and people living in urban environments. And he said that isn’t new. “Gun control is racist. Period,” Adell said, pointing to post-Emancipation laws that prohibited black gun ownership, and California’s Mulford Act, a 1967 bill crafted to disarm the Black Panthers in public spaces.

“Every piece of legislation that we see come from these folks who are trying to restrict the rights of legal gun owners disproportionately affects communities of color,” Adell said. “And it’s been that way since the beginning.”

Adell said that in his upstate community, judges sometimes denied permits without stating a reason. To move forward, the applicant would have to request a hearing. “And who does that effect? Who’s able to afford a lawyer or an attorney to represent them?” Adell said.

Getting approved for a pistol permit in New York City was particularly difficult, and concealed-carry permits from the rest of the state were not valid in the city. Adell said that, too, was problematic. “When you’re in an urban environment, and an environment where there’s violence and crime, you’re the person who needs that right and ability to carry a gun,” he said.

Some gun-control advocates have pointed to the recent mass shooting in Buffalo, where a white gunman appears to have intentionally targeted black victims, as evidence of why the Supreme Court’s ruling is dangerous. In his dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer wrote, “The dangers posed by firearms can take many forms,” and followed that with a long list or recent mass shootings, including the attacks in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas.

Regarding the Buffalo shooting, Justice Samuel Alito, in a concurring opinion in the case, countered that, “The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator,” and he questioned, “Will a person bent on carrying out a mass shooting be stopped if he knows that it is illegal to carry a handgun outside the home?” Instead of being a talking point for gun-control advocates, Adell said the Buffalo shooting should serve as a “reminder of why the Second Amendment is important.”

“That individual, from what has come out in the news, targeted that particular area because he knew he wasn’t going to be engaged by anybody,” Adell said. “I believe that all Americans, especially black Americans, are responsible for their own personal safety. I don’t subscribe to the idea that we should put our own personal safety in the hands of law enforcement, the government, or anybody else besides ourselves.”

Adell now worries that New York lawmakers are going to find new ways to continue restricting gun rights in the state and in New York City, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling. Hochul said they have “a whole lot of ideas” to do just that, including restrictions on “sensitive locations,” changes to the permitting process, and increased training requirements. “I’m prepared to go back to muskets,” she said. “Stay tuned. We’re just getting started here.”

The Rochester African American Firearms Association also was founded in the summer of 2020 during the worst of the Covid shutdowns and George Floyd protests, Adell said. The club now has about 75 members. Adell thinks gun clubs like his are helping to change the image of a typical gun owner, and he believes the image of black gun owners is changing for the better.

“When you think of the black guy with the gun, or the black girl or woman with the gun, there’s a certain image that comes into most people’s minds, and that image is usually not the legal, law-abiding gun owner,” he said. “I think that narrative is beginning to change.”

The rise in black gun ownership also has the potential to bridge cultural gaps, Adell said. The range his club shoots at is in a more rural area, and most of the customers aren’t black.

“You would have thought you would have had tension there, but it’s actually the opposite,” he said. “What you find is that these folks both embrace the Second Amendment, both embrace the spirit of America, to be free, to be able to enjoy the freedoms of being an American, and they see that they align more than they disagree.”