National African American Gun Association Head Weighs In On Gun Control Measures

The National African American Gun Association just celebrated its sixth anniversary back on February 28th, and the Second Amendment organization is growing by leaps and bounds at the moment. Founder and president Phillip A. Smith joins me on today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co to talk about why he started the association and why he’s opposed to any new gun control laws that would have a chilling effect on the Second Amendment rights of the people; including African Americans.

Gun control has historically been used to prevent disfavored individuals and groups from exercising their Second Amendment rights; from the Jim Crow-era laws (some of which are still on the books) that required prospective handgun owners to get permission from local police to New York’s Sullivan Act, which was adopted to prevent immigrants from owning firearms to protect themselves in the crowded and dangerous neighborhoods where they lived.

Today, of course, gun control advocates would never openly demand laws that would have a disparate impact on African Americans who choose to exercise their right to keep and bear arms, but that doesn’t mean that the enforcement of those laws are colorblind.

“I really struggle when I hear politicians, whoever they are, put out legislation that’s really not going to address the issue,” Smith says. “I’m all for going after the bad guys; if you’re a violent criminal you need to get put away forever. I’m firmly in that camp. But at the same time, we need to take a step back and look at not the symptom, but the disease.”

Smith argues that the “disease” of violence has certain characteristics, whether it’s the south side of Chicago, south central L.A., Detroit, or any other community plagued with violent crime and gang warfare.

“Lack of skillsets in terms of getting a job; the over-felonization of young folks, who by the time they’re 22 or 23 they cannot get a job anywhere because they have two or three felonies for low-level marijuana and drug offenses,” he stresses. “They have confrontational relationships with law enforcement at best. We need to go after those social structures which are causing those folks to be in a position where they don’t have the opportunity to make money to live. And if you or I were in the same position where we could not do anything for our families, couldn’t get a job since we can’t interact with anybody or anything in a normalized social fashion, then you’re going to be forced to do things that you would not normally want to do. And that’s where we need to put our emphasis and focus, not on law-abiding gun owners.”

Focus on the criminals, argues Smith, but also on the social, economic, and political structures that foster criminality in...

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