Amir Locke photography, 2nd Modification, and bigotry.

February 12, 2022

In this video, Amir Locke is shooting. There is also a lot of prejudice against black people who own guns. Amir Locke was killed by police just seconds after he was woken up by a SWAT team in Minneapolis. This is another example of how Black people who legally own guns become useless because of their race in high-risk situations.

American gun rights can’t be separated from race, and experts say that the country’s history of criminalising Blackness makes people think less favourably about African Americans who use their Second Amendment rights.

Those who have power around you, like Jennifer Carlson, a sociology professor at the University of Arizona, only care about your rights if they think you have them. “Rights only matter if people who have power around you think you have them,” she said.

Amir Locke, 22, was a legal gun owner with no record of a crime, according to his family. During a search for evidence in a murder case, a group of Minneapolis police officers went into a home on a “no-knock” raid. He died on February 2. Video from a body camera shows that he was shot less than 10 seconds after the SWAT team quietly opened the door with a key and started shouting instructions.

He was wrapped in a blanket with a gun and his finger off the trigger when police woke him up.

“Anyone who owns a gun should know that they could have been Amir Locke,” said Jeff Storms, a lawyer for the family. “However, the fact that it is often Black people who are in that situation makes us wonder, “Why isn’t it any American?”

Activists for Amir Locke and his family say the search was bad from the start because no-knock warrants are widely thought to be dangerous and in some cities they target Black people more than other people.

In the meantime, as more and more Black people own guns, experts say there’s more work to be done to dismantle the anti-Black racism that could lead to deadly confrontations.

On this country, race is a big deal

When people are under a lot of stress and have to make quick decisions, their brains can make important cognitive shortcuts, Carlson said.

Implicit bias is very important in cases where Black people and police are involved, because all through American history, crime has been linked to Black people.

“Weapons bias”: People connect black faces with weapons more quickly than white faces with weapons, she said. In cases where the article isn’t clear, people were more likely to think there was a gun that wasn’t there if they saw a black face.

One of the best examples of how race, gun rights, and politics of life and death work together and change in these kinds of situations is the “weapons bias.”

Police Government Analysis Board chief Chuck Wexler said that in quickly unfolding situations, the presence of a gun is a problem. This is a quote from Wexler.

“Race is a big deal in this country,” Wexler said. It’s hard to tell whether this person is black or white when they have guns in these situations. That’s the main point.

Cases like Amir Locke aren’t the best ones to use as an example because of their race, says Robert J. Cottrol, a legal historian at George Washington University Law School.

Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile, and now Amir Locke are all examples of people who aren’t the same. “There’s a risk in generalising from a lot of or unusual cases,” Cottrol said. In order to look at the question of race and Second Amendment rights, these aren’t the places to look.

This is what Carlson said: “The tragic fruits of dynamics that have been well documented and researched by students.”

“The problem is that when you have an encounter like what happened with Amir Locke, you have this right to self-defense that is sacred to the conservative right in this country.” It’s also possible that police officers come into that room already ready to think about what they’re doing because of the “warrior mindset,” which runs through a lot of police work. There are then “Black people with guns.”

Second Modification: Gun laws are meant to keep Black People from having guns.

As a professor at Emory College, Carol Anderson says that race has a long history with a second modification. She says that this connection goes back to the 17th century.

It was made through the Constitutional Conference as a “bribe” for people like Patrick Henry and George Mason in Virginia who were worried that the federal government wouldn’t protect them against slave revolts, she said.

The Second Modification, along with the three-fifths compromise, a promise to increase Atlantic slave trade by 20 years, and the fugitive slave clause, made sure that Southern states would ratify the Structure of the United States.

“It’s based on anti-Blackness, and it’s based on the fear of Black people, and it’s based on deeming Black people as criminals,” said Anderson, the author of “The Second.”

“They held the truth of the United States hostage in order to keep slavery for slaveholders,” they say.

Keeping Black people from getting guns was still a top legislative priority even after slavery was over and African People had full rights as residents.

Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law the “Mulford Act” in 1967, which meant that people could not carry loaded guns in public at the time. It was made with the goal of taking away guns from members of the Black Panther Party who had been patrolling Oakland neighbourhoods with guns to do copwatching and who had shown up at the California statehouse with guns to protest the bill. The NRA agreed with the invoice.

As more states added protections for gun owners, these legal doctrines have been used in different ways. When white people killed black people and used stand your ground laws as a defence, they were 10 times more likely to be found justified than if the shooter was black and the victim was white.

Professor of sociology David Yamane, who has been studying American gun culture for a decade, said that as people have become more likely to hide their guns, that fight has also been played out in terms of who gets a permit.

Study: White people were up to two times more likely than Black people to get a concealed handgun licence, according to a 2017 study from the University of Texas at Austin. The study looked at data from five different states.

The study also found that black people were 3.3 to five.5 times more likely to be denied a licence than a white person who applied for the same job.

In a recent case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Black Lawyers of Legal Help said that New York’s licencing rules make the Second Amendment a “legal fiction,” and that “just about all our clients who New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic.” That’s not by chance.

“New York passed laws that made it illegal for people of different races and cultures to own guns.” That’s still the case right now, the group said. Police and prosecutors are still enforcing it.

The “anti-Blackness” in the United States is making more Black people own guns.

A survey from the National Capturing Sports activities Foundation says that people are buying more guns than ever. Sales of guns to Black people rose 58 percent last year, the most of any demographic group.

There are three things that are making people more likely to own guns and join the National African American Gun Association, says Philip Smith-Soboyede, president of the group. The Black community is going through a “maturation process” that is changing people’s negative views of guns, and there’s a need for protection because of all the racial tension in the country.

Smith questioned the methods used by the SWAT team that led to the death of Locke. He said that the neighbourhood should push law enforcement to change how it interacts with Black people, since many NAAGA members are law enforcement or the military.

“Knee-jerk reactions” by law enforcement have led to the deaths of black women and men, he and his friends have talked about this a lot.

That’s not what Smith said, though. In your state, he said, “If we can open carry legally, Black people should be able to do this.”

This increase in Black people owning guns may make it more difficult for them to get help from the cops in the future. Anderson’s answer was grim.

“We’re in trouble,” she said. As long as we don’t get rid of the anti-Blackness, Black people without guns are a threat. Black people who have guns are a growing threat to the world.