Saying that gun rights are civil rights shouldn’t be controversial. After all, most of what we term as civil liberties are enshrined in the Bill of Rights, from freedom of speech and religion to protection against illegal search and seizure, and many others. The Second Amendment is smack dab in the middle of all of those. Saying the right to keep and bear arms is a civil right isn’t controversial; it’s obvious.
But some people can’t seem to wrap their gray matter around that.
Among them are some critics of the Department of Justice actually treating gun rights like civil rights, and John Lott has some words for those folks.
“The Civil Rights Division’s new focus on the Second Amendment, which is far outside its longstanding mission, is moving us even further away from our nation’s commitment to protecting all Americans’ civil rights,” said Stacey Young, a former division attorney who resigned shortly after the current administration took office.
The investigation into Los Angeles’ reluctance to grant concealed-carry permits has already drawn sharp criticism. “This is a gross misuse of the government’s civil rights enforcement authority,” said Christy Lopez, who served as deputy chief of the division under the Obama administration.
But poor black Americans — who face the highest risk of violent crime — gain the most from having the ability to protect themselves.
For women, the safest response when confronted by a criminal is to have a gun. Women who rely on passive behavior are 2.5 times more likely to suffer serious injury than women who use a firearm to defend themselves. Because criminals are overwhelmingly men, a woman attacked by a man faces a much larger strength imbalance than a man attacked by another man. A gun dramatically shifts that balance. It increases a woman’s ability to protect herself far more than it does for a man.
Background Check Errors Mostly Affect Blacks, Hispanics
Consider something as seemingly uncontroversial as background checks for gun purchases. Gun-control advocates often claim that the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) has stopped 5.1 million dangerous or prohibited people from buying guns since 1998. But more than 99 percent of these denials are false positives, and the errors fall disproportionately on law-abiding black and Hispanic men.
The impact of gun laws in general falls disproportionately on black and Hispanic men, even. And, in a world where people see disparity of outcomes as proof of racism, then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate all gun control laws.
Granted, I’m not someone who ascribes to that personally. I think it can be evidence of racism, but it’s not always. At least not directly, anyway.
Hellbound and Down 
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