What does one’s race have to do with one’s right to keep and bear arms? Well, nothing. The Second Amendment covers all American citizens and legal immigrants. Asking race is, at most, an identifier to help differentiate a black John Smith from a white one, and that’s about it.
Unfortunately for us all, that wasn’t how many people viewed it back in the day. They thought anyone who wasn’t white was someone who needed to be disarmed. Whether it was because they didn’t want to be overthrown or they just thought non-whites (and Catholics, for some reason) were particularly dangerous isn’t relevant. The truth was, they did.
Luckily, we’re more enlightened these days, right?
Not really.
We’ve talked a fair bit about the issues in New Jersey, particularly with racial disparity in permit issuance. Our own John Petrolino, who unfortunately lives there, has done a lot of work bringing this issue to light.
But let’s be real here. None of the people who need to be outraged are probably reading pro-gun sits like Bearing Arms. They’re reading Slate, and what are the odds of Slate covering this?
Well, better than I thought they were. Aymann Ismail’s firsthand account of the exhausting process of becoming a New Jersey gun owner may be eye-opening to the website’s more progressive readers.
So in 2020, I applied for a Firearm Purchaser Identification, a permit to purchase a firearm that is required in New Jersey. After fingerprints, references, application fees, and months of waiting, I was told over the phone that I had no choice but to withdraw my application. The issue was a misdemeanor trespassing charge in New York from my street-photographer days. Under New Jersey law, that should not have disqualified me from owning a gun. I had never been convicted of a felony. No domestic violence charges. No mental health issues. It didn’t matter. The Newark Police Department’s firearm permitting office told me my application was being withdrawn. They insisted they were doing me a favor, and that a denial would bar me from reapplying if I got my record expunged.
Again, I wasn’t even sure I wanted a gun. But the interaction was curious. It didn’t matter that I pointed out I met the legal requirements. Again and again, I was unsuccessful. It had me thinking about who is presumed “safe” to own a gun, and who isn’t. I began speaking with Black and brown gun owners across northern New Jersey, particularly in cities where violence, policing, and race overlap in complicated ways. An Afro-Cuban neighborhood friend I went to high school with in Newark told me he had applied for his own permit and received it in just two weeks. When I explained that I tried multiple times and was still waiting months after my latest application, he looked genuinely confused. Then he asked what race I’d listed on the paperwork. “Other,” I told him. He burst out laughing. “You idiot,” he said. “You’re supposed to put white.”
The more people I spoke to, the more I learned I was far from alone in making that “mistake.” The greater question of who gets to, and should, own a gun turned out to far more complicated than I knew. Few people—on the left or the right—want to talk about it. The ending of my own story helps explain why.
Oh, on this side of the right, we’re more than willing to talk about it. It’s just that no one on the left seems interested in listening.
Now, the author did, finally, get his license and didn’t have to lie about his race on his application, which is good news, but the fact that New Jersey did that in the first place is a major issue. It’s one that does need to be talked about because it clearly illustrates the bright string from the racist gun laws of the old days, and how little has changed.
Here in Georgia, many of our now dead gun control laws could be similarly linked. The prohibition of carrying a firearm at a “public gathering” was a reaction to armed black men and women responding to a violent attack that’s now called the Camilla Massacre. It wasn’t the shooting itself, but the fact that marchers, after being attacked, went home and got their own guns to fight back.
So it’s unsurprising that New Jersey didn’t have a law in place forbidding black gun ownership or concealed carry, but the application wasn’t much different than if they did.
It’s why subjective gun laws are always going to be an issue, and largely an issue for minorities. It’s part of why Bruen stuck them down. Anything that can be misused to cause harm to a particular group–any particular group–will be used or misused to cause harm to some group or another for no reason other than the people impacted are part of that group.
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