NEW YORK TIMES: …Blacks are less likely than whites to own a gun. In surveys from 1973 to 2012, an average of 27 percent of African-Americans nationwide said they owned a gun, compared with 47 percent of whites, according to data from NORC, a research center at the University of Chicago. Even so, their attendance at the N.R.A. convention was minuscule compared with their rate of gun ownership, let alone their presence in the population at large…
Part of the stigma around guns among African-Americans can be traced to high rates of gun violence, particularly affecting young blacks and those who live in poor, urban communities. Blacks die from gun violence at more than twice the rate of whites, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Organizations like the N.A.A.C.P., the National Urban League and the National Action Network have spoken out against gun violence affecting African-Americans and other minority groups. Compared with the white community, “in the black community you find a greater propensity of people who know someone who has been shot, who know someone who has been killed,” said Marc H. Morial, the president and chief executive of the National Urban League… (more)
