The latest school mass shooting in Florida, and the unfolding debate over gun control and gun violence is a reminder of the complicated, contradictory history of the NRA and gun control as they relate to Black people. Black people own guns and are the victims of gun and white vigilante violence, and while they have used guns for self-defense, neither the laws nor the NRA have had Black people, their rights and their lives in mind.

“America’s gun policies do not make sense until you consider race,” Ajenai Clemmons, a research associate at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke University, told Atlanta Black Star. “America’s conflicted self-identity as a democracy that promotes life, liberty, and the right to bear arms mirrors the contradictions in a self-identified democracy based on colonization and slavery.” READ MORE HERE.