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The NRA Is Not Demographically Challenged

This article is more than 8 years old.

An article by Adam Winkler titled “The NRA Will Fall. It’s Inevitable.” that ran in the Washington Post claimed the National Rifle Association (NRA) is doomed to fade away as America becomes a less rural and white nation.

Winkler wrote: “The core of the NRA’s support comes from white, rural and relatively less educated voters. This demographic is currently influential in politics but clearly on the wane.”

Winkler cites statistics from the Pew Research Center to back up his opinion that: “Unless the [NRA] begins to soften its no-compromises stance on gun safety legislation, it’s likely to become increasingly marginalized in a changing America.”

First, I must correct his politically correct jargon, as the NRA is actually one of the chief proponents of “gun safety.” The NRA’s rules for the safe handling of firearms have been tacked on the walls in gun ranges all over the U.S., they are used by tens of thousands of NRA-certified firearms instructors as they teach gun safety, and they are used by many police departments to keep officers safe. But then I’m using “gun safety” properly; Winkler is using it in place of “gun control.”

If Winkler, who is a professor at UCLA School of Law and the author of a very disingenuous book on gun control, would step out of his academic bubble he’d see how his Pew statistics aren’t telling very much of the story.

If Winkler were open-minded enough to visit urban gun ranges near Washington, D.C., New York City, or even Chicago he’d see how diverse the gun-owning community really is.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation’s surveys have found that “new target shooters—those who have taken up the activity in the last five years—are younger, female and more urban dwelling when compared to established target shooters, or those participating for more than five years.”

Even a Google search would show Winkler that the USA Today, hardly a pro-gun group, has reported that a large and growing percentage of women are now carrying handguns. The USA Today found that in Tennessee women hold “30% of almost 193,000 handgun-carry permits in effect at the end of 2013,” in Washington state, “100,000 of 451,000 concealed-carry permit holders are women” and in Florida “women were 22% of concealed weapon license holders as of May 31, up from 15% in 2004.”

After looking into these demographic changes the NSSF found that an “increase in female customers is not the only trend to which the industry is responding. Urban areas are beginning to see a significant uptick in legal gun ownership, which is slowly putting the original idea of the stereotypical gun owner to rest.”

The NRA has also begun challenging these demographics by running television ads featuring minorities and others who live in urban areas. The one that grabbed me is of a grandmotherly looking black woman who says, “I live in a government high-rise. Gang bangers and drug dealers walk down our halls everyday…. The police can’t keep us safe… But the Housing Authority told me if I bought a gun to protect myself they’d throw me to the streets. If I’m not free because of my address today what makes you think you’ll be free tomorrow. I marched for Martin Luther King at Selma. I know my rights. Now I have my gun. I am the National Rifle Association of America and I’m freedom’s safest place.”

While doing research for my book The Future of the Gun I interviewed a lot of inner-city residents who’ve had their right to defend themselves taken away. When you meet people who only want to be free, to be safe in America, but can’t because the Second Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights has been taken from them, you realize this is a moral issue and a basic civil-rights issue.

One of the most edifying people I met was a truck driver named Mike K. I interviewed Mike in downtown Allentown, Penn. We met in the upstairs of Joe Mascari’s Carpets & Rugs, as Mascari has given the top floor of his store to an after-school program called Camp Compass Academy that’s run by an elementary school teacher named John Anonni. Camp Compass teaches proper gun use and safety to mostly minority inner-city kids.

Mike K. was quick to tell me he’s just another guy who grew up in an inner city without a father, joined a gang, stole cars, did all sorts of stupid stuff, had a felony conviction at 18, and should have been incarcerated or shot dead by 21. He’s a black man whose first experiences with guns were with illegal semiautomatic handguns tucked into pants and stuffed into puffy jackets. But the thing is something saved him from all that bad stuff and that something had everything to do with guns.

We were seated in little plastic chairs made for middle school students. There was a small wood school desk between us.

Mike is now in his mid-30s and drives a truck to pay the bills and feed his family. He has tattoos on his arms of his three children’s names. Two of the names are in the shape of a crucifix on his left forearm and the third is on his right bicep. The two making the cross are wrapped in ivy, as that’s his wife’s name. He can’t own a gun because of that felony conviction when he was 18.

He told me slowly, warily, “You know, I’d be dead or locked up if John didn’t teach me to handle a gun.”

Mike chose his words carefully as he told me that two of his closest friends from those bad days are in jail for “shooting at cops” and others are dead. It’s a long, sad story but he keeps telling me his story “ain’t nothin’ special.” He wants me to understand that it’s what saved him that matters. He waves his right arm—the one with the cross bearing two of his kids names covered in ivy—at the city streets of Allentown, Penn., outside and says, “People blame guns for all that bad stuff out there. I tell ‘em it’s not guns. I tell them how John used guns to save my life.”

He leaned closer, puts his hands on the little school desk between us, and said, “The only way to save people like me is with good examples and by not lying to them about guns and all that. Those politicians who blame guns are making the streets worse. They’re sentencing kids to death and jail ‘cause they just don’t understand.”

He took a deep breath and leaned back and said, “Back in 1995 I was getting into fights, stealing, getting suspended from school and all that. Mentor after mentor quit on me. I was a lost cause in their eyes, someone that would either end up in jail or dead by 21. Let me tell you I was ready to give up, too. But then I was introduced to John.

“It was weird. Guns in my neighborhood were bad things. The guys who had them got them because a gun made them powerful. Guns made them cool. Most of my friends got handguns. No one taught them about guns. Most of their dad’s weren’t around. All they knew was a gun tucked in their pants made them feared, made them dangerous.

“But you know,” Mike said with his eyes clearing and a smile filling his face, “John took me out to a gun range and taught me to shoot a shotgun, then a rifle. He showed me how to unload a gun and to shoot safely by keeping my finger off the trigger until I’m gonna shoot and teaches me to keep the barrel in a safe direction and all that. He teaches me responsibility. He shows me how a real man handles a gun. He trusted me. No one ever did that. I didn’t want to let him down.”

Mike shifted his feet and said, “So I stopped getting in trouble and got my grades up. John took me hunting. Soon I’m back in the neighborhood showing my friends the picture of the deer I got and they think it’s so cool. So all I want to do is go hunting. It was so good, so far away from the streets and in my hands was this great responsibility, this gun, and all I had to do was handle it right, like a man does, and I’d be right and good and maybe get a deer or whatever.

“Looking back now, I know something else was going on. When John took me hunting in those days we’d sit and talk about what was going on in my life and ways to make things better. I connected with John because I looked at him as a big brother, not as some social worker and because he was showing me something I never saw before—how guns are tools and that when you do things right they’re good and you’re good. I finally found someone to look up to and a way to prove myself with the very thing my friends feared and respected most—guns. I had to earn everything I did with John. I had to learn discipline by hunting and shooting.”

He paused again and his eyes go down to the wood table before coming back up again, and told me that some of his friends from the streets wanted to pull him back. They thought those hunting photos were pretty cool, but they wanted him to hang out and do all that bad stuff he was getting away from.

Mike said, “Eventually, John and I spent less time together. I was finally happy with myself, with my life, and I owed that to John. But then one day I was with a group of friends and they decided to rob some kids standing on a street corner. Not thinking, I stayed in the car instead of leaving. Naturally, we got arrested. I thought my life was over because I was the only one of adult age—the blame fell squarely on my shoulders. I didn’t know what to do or who to turn to. I never had a father figure. My friends were all I had. I couldn’t call John. I was scared. I didn’t want to disappoint him. Besides, I hadn’t spoken to John in months, why would he help me? Although every bone in my body didn’t want to, my heart told me to call him. John took me in with open arms. He sat me down just like in the beginning of our relationship and we came up with a plan to get myself back on the correct path. I have been on that same path ever since.”

Mike’s eyes got emotional as he explained that he’s now trying to get his gun rights back after that awful mistake almost 20 years ago. He didn’t get any jail time for that robbery, just probation. Nevertheless, he has a felony conviction so he can’t own a gun. Now his wife can’t have a gun because, as a felon, Mike can’t be in the same house with a gun. That’s eating away at him. “She’s not safe when I’m out driving the truck. She’s not safe because of me,” he says.

He has a lawyer helping him try to get his Second Amendment rights back. He hopes he can have his freedom again. He only wants to live free and to protect his family and for his wife to be safe when he’s away driving trucks, but the law is stopping him.

No, Winkler’s demographics and misuse of the phrase “gun safety” doesn’t tell the real story, not nearly.