Gun sales: More diverse buyers shift firearm culture
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Noah Robertson Staff writer
Janay Harris, who works at a credit card company in Dover, Delaware, enjoys the nightlife in nearby cities like Washington and Philadelphia. But starting two years ago, nights in those cities stopped feeling safe.听
Her local news kept reporting violent crimes聽鈥� a carjacking here, an armed robbery there. Ms. Harris saw pictures of the victims and thought they looked like ordinary people. They looked, she thought, kind of like her.听
Ms. Harris decided that wouldn鈥檛 be her, but not because she鈥檇 stop going out. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 want to have to be stuck in my house after a certain hour or avoid certain places because I鈥檓 fearful,鈥� she says.
Why We Wrote This
The predominant view of gun owners as older, conservative, white, and male isn鈥檛 wrong, but it鈥檚 shifting. First-time gun buyers are much more diverse, and they鈥檙e changing gun culture.
So a year and a half ago, Ms. Harris bought a gun and started visiting the shooting range. For now, it almost never leaves the house, she says, but since purchasing it she鈥檚 felt more confident and secure 鈥� even when it isn鈥檛 with her.听
Ms. Harris is one of millions of Americans who have settled on firearms for their own security in the last two years. Given the pandemic, , social unrest, and political violence, they increasingly feel that risks are everywhere, and means people are less likely to rely on the government for protection. Many now view self-defense as their own responsibility.
That shift in thought has fueled an increase in first-time gun buyers and a more diverse group of firearm owners. That, in turn, has led to new expectations of gun culture, including a desire for community.
鈥淵ou definitely see in the context of gun ownership among people of color that there鈥檚 much more of a community dynamic,鈥� says聽Jennifer Carlson, a sociologist at the University of Arizona and expert on gun politics.
Seeking self-defense: A shift in gun culture
American gun sales regularly follow a boom and bust cycle, and a was predictable. The people buying were not. 聽found about half of the new gun owners were women and half were a racial minority. That鈥檚 a huge departure from predominant firearm owner demographics, which are still聽 older, white, conservative, and male.听
As support for stricter gun laws hits its Second Amendment activists have welcomed the added diversity as an expansion of their cause. But guns mean different things to different people, says Dr. Carlson. People associate 鈥済un culture鈥� with small-government politics and individualism, she says, but some of these new owners are approaching firearms in an attempt to find, rather than reject, a sense of community.听
According to 2017 data from , 36% of white Americans own a firearm, but only 24% and 15% of Black and Hispanic Americans do. The gap is even larger between men and women, at 39% to 22%. Among all Americans, those who lean Republican are twice as likely to have a gun as those who lean Democratic.听
The past several years have altered those numbers somewhat, but the average gun owner is still like 鈥渢he characters from 鈥楧uck Dynasty鈥� 鈥� older, white, male, politically conservative, Southern, rural,鈥� says David Yamane, a professor at Wake Forest University and founder of the blog 鈥淕un Culture 2.0.鈥�
鈥淔irearm Purchasing During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Results From the 2021 National Firearms Survey鈥�; Annals of Internal Medicine; Matthew Miller, Wilson Zhang, Deborah Azrael; 2022
There has been a decadeslong shift, however, in the reason people give for buying guns. No longer hunting, it鈥檚 now .听
鈥淲hat鈥檚 interesting about self-defense, though, is that it can hold a lot of very different social anxieties 鈥� different experiences of precarity, of danger, of threat,鈥� says Dr. Carlson.听
Women, for example, might buy a gun because they don鈥檛 feel like the police can show up in time to protect them, she says. Black Americans, on the other hand, might buy a gun because they don鈥檛 feel like the police will protect them.听
鈥淲hen you have that sort of sentiment that you鈥檙e on your own, 鈥� well, then you go buy a gun,鈥� says Dr. Carlson.听
Wanting to take control of her own safety led Carrie Lightfoot to buy a firearm for the first time more than 10 years ago. She came from a non-gun-owning family in New York, and never considered owning one herself. Then she exited an abusive relationship, and her former partner began stalking her and her four kids. She was scared.
But as she shopped around, Ms. Lightfoot noticed a problem: Everything was made for men. Accessories and holsters didn鈥檛 fit women鈥檚 bodies. The advertising was machismo. She couldn鈥檛 find female shooting groups.
So she started one.听
, her group for female gun owners, has since grown to 300 chapters and around 20,000 members. They sell merchandise on their website from compression shorts with a built-in holster to bullet-themed jewelry. Ms. Lightfoot, a former National Rifle Association board member, has seen the group鈥檚 influence.
鈥淕un ownership isn鈥檛 a foreign planet to women any longer,鈥� she says.听
Just ask Ms. Harris, of Dover, who likely wouldn鈥檛 have considered buying one if her best friend, a gun owner, hadn鈥檛 taken her to the shooting range two years ago and gone with her when she bought her first gun.听
鈥淚t was something for [us] to bond over,鈥澛爏ays Ms. Harris.听
Finding community through gun ownership
An emphasis on community is typical of a group Ms. Harris plans to join this month: the 聽(NAAGA).听Its founder, Philip Smith, started the organization in 2015 to counter the stigma many Black Americans feel around firearms.听
鈥淚f you have a gun then you must be a bad guy,鈥� he says of common stereotypes. 鈥淵ou must be a gangbanger. You must be a hood, must be a thug. You can鈥檛 be a good guy with a gun.鈥�
Since the pandemic NAAGA鈥檚 membership has boomed, says Mr. Smith. In one four-day stretch, the group added almost 3,000 new members, and the total member body is now about 45,000. About two-thirds are men and one-third are women. Each new member learns about the history of African Americans and firearms 鈥� dating back to Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman. Then they learn about gun safety.听
鈥淚 think it鈥檚 one of the best things that has come out of all this 鈥� that Black people are now taking self-ownership of their own destiny, their own life, and saying, you know what, the Second Amendment is mine too,鈥� says Mr. Smith.听
Taking ownership of the Second Amendment has its risks. Matthew Miller, professor of health sciences at Northeastern University and lead author of the 2021 study documenting more diverse gun owners, notes that a firearm in the house increases each inhabitant鈥檚 risk of injury or self-harm. Millions of new gun owners expose millions of adults and children to that danger.听
Many new gun owners are aware of those risks; some don鈥檛 even like guns. P.B. Gomez, a student at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, started the two years ago in response to the mass shooting that targeted Hispanic Americans in El Paso, Texas. Guns have their limits, though. They won鈥檛 fix racism, he says, and in a confrontation firing a weapon is almost always a bad option.
鈥淎 lot of our members prior to the anxieties and realizations about American society wouldn鈥檛 have considered guns,鈥� says Mr. Gomez. 鈥淭hey鈥檝e come to it almost as 鈥榯his is a necessity.鈥欌��
Still, he and other members of the group felt like Latinos needed a space to discuss self-defense, one that didn鈥檛 support Confederate flags in gun stores or AR-15鈥檚 styled with 鈥淏uild the wall鈥� messages 鈥� both things Mr. Gomez has seen. Their group, he says, mostly attracts people who lean left and preach social responsibility 鈥� people like Jackie Garcia.听
Ms. Garcia, an electrician in San Antonio, Texas, started researching gun ownership around the 2020 election. At that time, she lived in a small, heavily conservative and white town north of Dallas and saw racism toward Latino people like herself. At a gas station one day, she says a man leaned over to her and motioned to a Latino man paying for his drink. 鈥淭his is why I voted for Trump, and that鈥檚 why he鈥檚 going to win in 2020,鈥� he told her. 鈥淗e鈥檚 going to get rid of all these people.鈥�
The hate toward a total stranger didn鈥檛 make sense to her. But it was scary. 鈥淲ho鈥檚 to say that that hate wouldn鈥檛 be turned on me?鈥� she thought. If it ever was, she wanted to be prepared.听
So Ms. Garcia started taking classes at the gun range and signed up for a pilot course on handguns. Eventually, she bought a Smith & Wesson Shield 9 and got a concealed carry permit months later. Almost every time she leaves the home, her gun goes with her.
She felt safer, but also conflicted. She couldn鈥檛 reconcile owning something she associated so much with older, white, conservative men. Finding the Latino Rifle Association and becoming a moderator on its online discussion board helped. There, Ms. Garcia felt like she fit in.听
鈥淚t鈥檚 refreshing to see younger people, people from all types of backgrounds,鈥� she says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not just a certain demographic that fits the gun culture.鈥�
That doesn鈥檛 mean everyone needs to hear she鈥檚 a part of it. Only her wife and her parents know she鈥檚 a gun owner. It鈥檚 something she does, says Ms. Garcia, not as a part of her identity. She hopes to keep it that way.
