As More White Supremacists Commit Mass Shootings, Black Americans Feel ‘Safer’ Owning A Gun

With the recent increase in mass shootings by white supremacists, Black Americans are taking steps to protect their families. The latest shooter, 33-year-old Mauricio Garcia, who killed eight people at an outdoor mall near Dallas, Texas, wore a “Right Wing Death Squad” patch promoting white supremacy and violence.

Organizations like the National African American Gun Association https://naaga.co report an influx of new members. NAAGA was founded in 2015 and has more than 45,000 members and 75 chapters.

According to Wikipedia, NAAGA’s growth occurred “significantly as a reaction to Black deaths.”

Danielle and Andre Sidney joined the Kansas City Chapter of NAAGA in 2017. Both were longtime firearm owners.

“I was a night student going to community college,” recalled Sidney who has owned a gun since she was 21. “I would get out of classes at 9 or 10 o’clock at night, and so I felt safer owning a firearm.”

She and her husband are also proponents of firearm safety and training which NAAGA promotes. And, they are aware of the dangers minorities increasingly face as targets in mass shootings.

May 2022

A year ago, a white supremacist murdered 10 people and injured three at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York. The 19-year-old gunman was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in February.

The sister of one of the shooting victims addressed the shooter, Payton Gendron.

“You don’t know a damn thing about Black people,” she said. “We’re human. We like our kids to go to good schools. We love our kids. We never go to no neighborhoods to take people out.”

Gendron also spoke at his sentencing.

“I did a terrible thing that day. I shot and killed people because they were Black. Looking back now, I can’t believe I actually did it. I believed what I read online and acted out the hate, and now I can’t take it back, but I wish I could,” he said.

June 2015

It’s been close to eight years since a young white man opened fire inside Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing the pastor and eight members attending a Bible study group. Dylann Roof showed up at the church and was welcomed by the parishioners who believed he had come to worship. But the 21-year-old was a self-described white supremacist who wanted to start a “race war.”

The Justice Department reached a settlement in 2021 with 14 families who alleged the FBI “was negligent when it failed to prohibit the sale of a gun by a licensed firearms dealer to the shooter.” Roof was sentenced to death row and is in prison in Terre Haute, Indiana. Last October the Supreme Court rejected his appeal of his sentence.

Changing Narrative

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported that white nationalist hate groups grew 55% during former President Donald Trump’s administration.

In 2021 The National Shooting Sports Foundation reported that gun ownership by African Americans had gone up 58.2%.

Incidents of racial hatred and violence have not gone unnoticed by the Sidneys who have one child.

“In society today as African Americans, there has been concern for us to be safe, and that’s to me what I feel is part of the influx [in NAAGA membership],” Danielle Sidney explained, “not necessarily one or two events because we have them all the time, but I think it’s a collective feeling overall of wanting to be safe, to be in an environment where you feel safe.”

Andre Sidney added, “My father owned firearms. My grandfather owned firearms. It’s always been the notion that you hide it from your family, from your kids … but hiding it from your family doesn’t necessarily protect you in your time of need.”

Conversations about Second Amendment rights often omit Black voices, but historically many homeowners purchased guns during the Jim Crow era. As a little girl, Sidney understood the reason family members owned firearms.

“I grew up with a gun in the house between grandparents in the South,” she said. “A gun was safety back then. There were no alarm systems. There was no ADT or Vivint. You had a gun and that was used to keep people at bay.”