A Supreme Court ruling on 2nd Amendment could lead to more deaths of Black people | Solomon Jones

Last summer, for the first time in my five-plus decades of life, I purchased a firearm to protect my home. I did so not because of the violence in the urban communities that have shaped me. I did so because I felt that America’s racism was about to boil over in violence.

I’d watched with growing alarm as Donald Trump’s lies and racist rhetoric emboldened white supremacists. Goaded by Trump, they spoke their hate and laid siege to the capital in Michigan. By August, I’d seen enough, writing that “President Donald Trump has emboldened America’s racists, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it would be irresponsible to leave my family defenseless.” Five months later, when an overwhelmingly white mob armed with weapons, Confederate flags, and other racist symbols stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election, I was proven right. If such people could attack the very seat of democracy and assault armed police officers in the process, they could surely go further if given the chance.

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That’s why I’m concerned that the Supreme Court is preparing to hear a challenge to a New York state law limiting the right to carry concealed handguns to those who can demonstrate special need to do so. If the conservative-leaning court strikes down the law, more Americans could be walking around with hidden handguns.

While I support the Second Amendment right to bear arms and have exercised that right myself, the constant pushback against racial justice movements has created a dangerous atmosphere. While legislators in GOP-led states like Oklahoma and Florida are passing laws that make it easier to run over protesters with cars, enabling more Americans to legally carry guns in public will lead to more shootings of unarmed Black people.

At a time when increasing attacks on ethnic and racial minorities are combined with an epidemic of gun violence, striking down the New York law could spell disaster for everyone — but for Black and brown people especially. Just as white police officers who disproportionately shoot Black people claim they do so because they fear for their lives, I believe white citizens will do the same. After all, they’ve done it before.

George Zimmerman, a white and Hispanic man, claimed self-defense when he followed, shot, and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in a gated Florida community. Zimmerman, who said he feared for his life, was acquitted of second-degree murder at trial. He went on to paint prints of Confederate flags that got sold at a “Muslim free” gun store, while Trayvon never saw his 18th birthday.

Gregory and Travis McMichael — a white father and son — shot and killed an unarmed Black jogger named Ahmaud Arbery in a Georgia suburb, then claimed Arbery violently attacked after Travis McMichael pulled a shotgun on Arbery. The McMichaels, along with William Bryan, who filmed the incident and allegedly participated, are in jail awaiting trial. Arbery will never get to tell his side of the story.

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Michael Drejka, a white man who shot and killed a Black father of four named Markeis McGlockton in a dispute over a handicapped parking space, was convicted of manslaughter, but not before claiming he feared for his life after the unarmed McGlockton pushed him.

After the verdict, McGlockton’s mother, Monica Robinson, put the whole thing into perspective. “This conviction doesn’t bring our son back,” Robinson said, “but it does give us some sense of justice because far too often the criminal justice system fails us by allowing people who take the lives of unarmed Black people to walk free as though their lives meant nothing.”

She was right. In 2017, the Marshall Project, a nonprofit journalism organization that covers criminal justice, examined 400,000 homicides committed by civilians between 1980 and 2014. They found that in one of six killings where a white person killed a Black man, there was no legal consequence — ”a rate far higher than for homicides involving other combinations of races.”

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I shudder to think what that rate would look like if everyone could carry concealed weapons. I fear that the same racists emboldened to storm the Capitol would feel justified in shooting anyone who scared them. And Black people, unfortunately, scare them.

The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms was never about giving people the right to shoot those who sparked their irrational fears. It was meant to protect Americans from tyranny.

Unfortunately, that right was not really meant for Black people, as evidenced by gun control laws that have previously made it illegal for Black people to own or carry firearms.

In a country where the lives of Black people are routinely devalued, African Americans must be as engaged in fair enforcement of Second Amendment rights as others are. We have to know what our rights are when it comes to guns and exercise them lawfully as if our lives are at stake — because they are.