It's Time to Admit It: The Democrats' Gun Control Laws Are Racist | Opinion

Seventeen people were shot in Chicago this past weekend. Four of these individuals lost their lives. Tragically, this was just a normal weekend in the Windy City and many others, which are experiencing a spike in violent crime. And Black Americans are bearing the brunt of this violence.

The overall rate of gun violence reached a 28-year high last year with drastic increases in murders among Black men, according to an analysis of federal data conducted by the Wall Street Journal.

Some of this is not new; since 1990, rates of gun-related homicide have been highest among Black men in their twenties. And yet, after the highs of the 1990s, homicide rates plummeted, especially for Black men. What we're seeing now is a reversal of that trend.

In 2021, there were 142 fatalities for every 100,000 Black Americans, a 74 percent increase since 2014 and a figure that dwarfs the homicide rate for other races. "Homicide rates are as much as 23 times higher among Black men, and as much as nearly four times higher among Hispanic men than among white men," the WSJ analysis found.

Unfortunately, the people who run the cities where Black Americans live are not up to the task of addressing this problem. During the recent midterm election campaign season, Republicans hammered Democrats for their soft-on-crime policies, which Republicans argued contributed to the increase in gun violence. In response, Democrats downplayed the matter, calling the criticism an attempt to fear-monger, or racism.

But for Black families, the reality on the ground is very real. And it's devastating.

Yet time and time again, instead of defending Black lives, Democrats focus on the wrong thing: They try to curb gun ownership instead of gun violence.

President Joe Biden recently indicated that he plans to get a bill passed that would ban "assault rifles" during the lame-duck session before the next Congress takes session next year. In so doing, the President played to the Democrats' pattern of focusing on high-profile mass shootings instead of on the quotidian violence in Black and Latino communities, which accounts for far more victims than mass shootings.

But pushing for more gun restrictions on law-abiding gun owners isn't just the wrong approach; it will directly contribute to the problem that desperately needs solving.

Curbing legal gun ownership has a disproportionately negative impact on Black Americans because it hinders their ability to defend themselves where law enforcement has failed to do so.

To put it simply, the Democrats' gun control laws are racist to their core. And it's time to admit it.

What occurred during an Assembly Judiciary Committee meeting in New Jersey's legislature provides a prime example. Lawmakers were debating Bill A4769, which proposes to further restrict citizens' right to bear arms. It is designed to counteract the Supreme Court's decision in New York Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a landmark case that substantially limited the ability of state and local governments to restrict the bearing of arms through onerous licensing requirements.

The New Jersey bill, passed last month, makes nearly the entire state a de facto "sensitive place" where citizens are not allowed to carry firearms. It also significantly increases the fees involved in obtaining a permit to carry, firearms ID card, or pistol purchaser's permit while adding even more requirements.

And then they said the quiet part out loud.

"Does anybody really want to put more guns in the hands of people that live in Paterson and Newark and Elizabeth and Camden?" Assemblyman John McKeon said, arguing in favor of the legislation.

Of course, Newark and Elizabeth and Camden are predominantly populated by Black and Latino Americans. They also have some of the highest crime rates.

But does he have a point? Shouldn't we want fewer guns in the places where crime is the highest?

Not legal guns. "Handguns are used more often to prevent the commission of crimes than by felons attempting them," a 1991 study found. "The gun lobby supports the common sense intuition that the average criminal has no more desire to face an armed citizen than the average citizen has to face an armed criminal." Meanwhile, a 2013 study ordered by the CDC, no friend to gun ownership, found that "almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008." More recently, the polling firm Centiment conducted a study in March 2021 revealing that Americans use guns to defend themselves about 1.7 million times per year. And a 2022 study estimated that there were 162,000 cases a year where someone "almost certainly would have been killed" if they "had not used a gun for protection."

The numbers clearly show that deliberately making it harder for Black Americans to carry guns is only placing them in more danger.

Despite what McKeon seems to believe, most Black people are not violent criminals. But they are more likely to be victims of violent criminals. Law-abiding African Americans should have the same opportunity to exercise their right to bear arms as everyone else.

Unfortunately, Democrats, who loudly proclaim their supposed concern for the plight of this demographic do not seem to care about the Black lives lost due to the policies they support.

Jeff Charles is the host of "A Fresh Perspective" podcast and a contributor for RedState and Liberty Nation.

The views in this article are the writer's own.