Why Black Americans are Arming Themselves in Trump’s America

By Sarah Leonard

While overall gun sales dropped after President Trump’s election, gun sales to Black Americans rose, and Black people account for the greatest increase in U.S. firearm sales in 2020. Imaeyen Ibanga, a senior producer and presenter with AJ+, attended a firearm training run by a Black-owned armory to learn why. Here are a few of her takeaways.

This is the second installment in a series about guns in America. Read our interview with a member of the Socialist Rifle Association here.

The increase in gun sales reflects national instability and fear

Black Americans are buying more guns because they don’t feel safe in their own country, Ibanga said. “Black people have been saying for generations that police are abusing them and treating them inequitably – this is not a 21st century problem or a 20th century problem,” she told me. “But I think the difference you see [now] is the federal and state and city level response to things … the kind of language we’re hearing from government officials. In some instances, officials have used the language of segregationists.” This has led people to feel like they have to protect themselves, and buying firearms is one way they’ve been trying to do that.

As part of her reporting, Ibanga interviewed participants at the training. While some people there were entirely new to guns, other participants considered gun ownership a family tradition. “One family –  a mother, daughter and aunt – was there. The mother had owned a gun, and her father taught her decades ago how to shoot. She came out to be reeducated and get new training because of what was going on in the nation right now,” Ibanga said. “A lot of people echoed that sentiment.” 

[Michael Bendeck/AJ+]

Black gun owners span the political spectrum

Within the group of people Ibanga met seeking training, there was a range of opinions on politics. But regardless of how they voted, many felt that they needed the gun training “to protect themselves in this environment [of national crisis],” she said. “For them, it’s not about politics. It’s about protection.”None of the people at the training she spoke to affiliated themselves with the National Rifle Association (NRA), which is well-known for its right-wing politics. “The NRA doesn’t even defend people like Philando Castile who was a legal gun owner,” she said, referring to the 32-year-old Black man shot and killed by a cop at a traffic stop in Minnesota. She also noted that the group “was for gun control when Black people started exercising their Second Amendment rights.”

Armed protesters often violate the rules of good gun ownership

In addition to interviewing people, Ibanga participated in the firearms training and learned quite a bit from the experience, she said. “Much of what we see when we see gun owners portrayed at protests [is] in direct opposition to what they were teaching. Even holding your gun – it’s supposed to be at a low ready [gun aimed at the ground] … so looking at what happened in St. Louis with the McCloskeys, I was like, oh so this by the standards of this education is not responsible gun ownership. That’s something I wouldn’t have known.”Another takeaway was that to be a responsible gun owner, you have to be in a constant state of education and practice. “All those people marching on the Michigan Capitol to protest quarantine – I’d be really interested in whether those people had had gun ownership and training in the last 12 months,” she said.

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