African-Americans Involvement in the Shooting Sports...

[Deanimator]

Deanimator, where can I get that stock you are talking about for a good price?

I bought mine direct from Savage. I just called and told them I wanted to order a 10BVSS stock for my 10FP. I think it was somewhere between $100-$150 about five years ago. Compare that to other commercial stocks and it's a real bargain, even if they're up to $200 now.

I also used to have a Choate Ultimate Sniper stock for it, which I gave away to a friend. It was an excellent prone stock from a bipod or rest, but I wanted a stock that I could use prone with a sling and glove, and the rail on the Choate was just too far away at the end of the forend for that. If you're ONLY going to shoot prone, that may be a good option for you. I switched to the Savage varmint stock because it had more than enough meat in the forend in which to mount a sling rail. If I were still shooting rifle, I'd probably add an adjustible butt plate and cheekpiece.

 

[XDKingslayer]

In reality, the only people who are going to insist on using "African-American" instead of "black" are self-righteous neo-hippies; these people can't be persuaded by rational argument (just try debating gun-control with them), and no one takes them seriously anyway.

So then let's let anti-gun people run aroud unchecked and not take them seriously too.

Shines a different light now doesn't it...

 

[Vaarok]

I live in Upstate NY, so it's about as culturally diverse as a bowl of rice-grains, but I currently have a tally of three asians and a buncha girls who I've converted either by arranging proxy instruction or simply talking them into it through conversations.

I will recount one very awkward but funny thing I saw at the local gunshop once. This TALL, and I mean TALL college-age black kid comes in and buys a box of 7.62x39 and a couple small boxes of .22s, and as he comes up to the counter he says he just got a SKS, and I just wordlessly chicken-wing my trigger-hand up against my shoulder, and he grinned sheepishly.

 

[V1K1NG0]

I am American first and foremost (yet for some reason people get the impression that I am a foreigner, go figure). I think it all has to do with location (but not always). I grew up in a big city in South Texas and firearms never crossed my mind. When I moved to rural OK was when I was first exposed to firearms. Majority of my firends went hunting every year and I really felt left out as no one in my family ever had thought of firearms. The gun culture there made me feel isolated as I did not even know who I could ask. I finally built up enough courage to ask the Chief of Police (member of my church) to teach me. Not only did he teach me but he gave me my first firearm.

I honestly do not like it when people say I am a minority because I feel I am not. I am an American (not a minority, not a majority) just an American.

If you want to learn about the shooting sports or hunting, you need to take the initiative and just ASK. You might get ignored or blown off by some but dont give up.

If you want to teach others about the shooting sports or hunting, you need to search out your students (whoever they may be).

I am a firm believer that talking about change does not do anything and talking about others not changing does not do anything (well it may make you feel better). If you want change you need to start with yourself and then your family and then your friends etc.

Write it down and do it.
example:
I will teach X number of people about the benefits of firearms.
I will take X amount of people to the range to shoot for the first time or second for that matter.

I will ask someone today to teach me about firearms or hunting etc. If they say no I will ask someone else.

I will look up the local ranges near me and call them and make an appointment to learn about firearms.

I will call the local club and ask them to teach me.

 

[clarence222]

Some of the most active shooters I know are black. I refuse to refer to them as Africn American, I done refer to myself as European American, so why should they. We are either Americans or we aren't.

 

[coyotehitman]

But do you think that the common "Stereotypes" for African-Americans would tend to keep them away from the shooting sports along with any other ethnicities?

What do you mean by this?

 

[JohnBT]

"Americans who hyphenate themselves are by their own definition, racists. What's wrong with just plain "AMERICAN"?"

Says the guy with this for his location:

"REPUBLIC OF TEXAS, DISTRICT OF ARLINGTON"

That's worse than hyphenation.

What's wrong with just plain Texas?

John

 

[JohnBT]

Back to the question,
"Quote: But do you think that the common "Stereotypes" for African-Americans would tend to keep them away from the shooting sports along with any other ethnicities?

What do you mean by this? "

_________________________

You really need to read Kenn Blanchard's Black Man With A Gun. The link has been posted earlier. Here's a sample, a small sample.

"In the beginning I had aspirations of becoming just a firearms instructor for the hundreds of residents in the Washington, DC metropolitan area but ran into reality along the way. Despite my extensive training by some of the best pistoleros in the world I was a pariah. I didn’t know how strong the opposition was to the truth, training and responsibility. I didn’t know about the effects gun control had stained the brains of my people and the American culture. I changed direction and broadened my focus."

"Our goal was to start chapters in all the states where there were a large number of African American firearms enthusiast and provide them a club that fostered lawful and responsible gun ownership. This doesn’t seem like a big deal unless you realize that black people have been conditioned not to trust or openly admit gun ownership. It has been illegal for a person of color to own a gun for so long that it will take some time before we as a people accept the truth. So that is my job. We are to grow, educate, motivate and bring my people together so that we can come out of the closet and stop being used as pawns in the politics of the . The idea was sound. It just doesn’t pay to be right.

Until the day when the phrase Black Man with a Gun is no big deal, I’ll be here. In fact, if you are a law abiding, gun owning, voting citizen of the regardless of race, you are probably a black man with a gun too."

 

[jakemccoy]

Hello Everyone,

I have always wondered why I haven’t seen many African Americans in the shooting sports? I'll come out right away with the fact that I am Mixed (Dad's Black, Mom's White). And at the age of 15 I've only seen maybe 5 or 6 Afro-Americans in a gun store or on the range for that matter. I live in a good area and racism has never been a problem. But do you think that the common "Stereotypes" for African-Americans would tend to keep them away from the shooting sports along with any other ethnicities? Thanks in advance for trying to help me understand this topic better.

You may have a point. However, are you drawing your conclusion from your experience at your local ranges and locals stores? I know plenty of law-abiding black people involved with shooting sports. Anyway, I have been to ranges where there are only white people around. I've also been to ranges where almost half the folks who come in are black, and they look like square law-abiding citizens. It's a big country.

 

[SoCalShooter]

Most shooters are not racists like the shooting community is made out to be, I know a couple of American shooters who are black and they are in highpower rifle and just casual shooting.

 

[yokel]

It's my fervent hope that certain ethnic group's unqualified support of the Second Amendment takes off in a big way and real soon...

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/08/13/Whites_to_be_US_minority_by_2042/UPI-53591218683948/

Whites to be U.S. minority by 2042

WASHINGTON, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Whites will become a minority in the United States as early as 2042, a Census Bureau report to be released Thursday projects.

Census Bureau demographer Grayson Vincent told the Detroit Free Press that's about a decade earlier than previously forecast as the point at which all Americans will be minorities.

The report will show that by 2050, non-Hispanic whites, who now represent two-thirds of the U.S. population, will number 203 million out of the nation's estimated 439 million people, the newspaper said.

In addition, the number of Hispanics will likely triple by 2050 to 133 million, while the black population is projected to reach 66 million and the Asian segment of the population will be about 41 million, the report said. The American Indian and Alaska Natives population will reach about 9 million.

We're clearly doomed and defeated if it does not.

Liberty is a blessing that must be secured and if one generation fails to properly secure liberty, other generations will neither reap liberty's blessings, nor have the opportunity to secure it for themselves or their posterity.

 

[rhubarb]

I live in an area where African-Americans make up maybe a percent of the population. I don't know or work around any myself.

This area is about 85% Hispanic. Mexican-Merican. However, some 75% of local gun stores are staffed wholly or partly by whites. The local shooting sports are dominated by white men. It's rare to see a Hispanic in a local match, be it handgun or long gun.

Cultural thing, I think. They've accepted for generations that guns are for the police and criminals. That applies to both sides of the border. Of course most arms are illegal in Mexico unless you have the money to pay off an official. Much of our population immigrated from Mexico. Even on this side for those who have lived here for centuries, Mexicans have been discouraged from owning arms. It's really only in the last generation or two that those with Hispanic surnames have started to be widely elected to public office and reach the upper echelons of business here. Whatever racism existed here in the past, though, is absent among the local white shooters I know. We would love to see more dark complected Americans competing.

The concept of legally carrying a gun for self-defense seems foreign here despite the violent crime due to the drug trade. A couple of years ago, I looked at the Texas Dept. of Public Safety's website listing of CHLs by county and our county had something like a fourth of the amount of CHLs per capita compared to the state in general. There's plenty of Mexican hunters of deer and dove, but in general the gun culture here is overwhelmingly white. There's a white dude from my county shooting skeet in the Olympics.

It's not an economic thing. When you see how many guys have jacked up 4x4 crew cab diesels for daily drivers and Harleys for weekend fun, you know it ain't about the money. It's cultural. I, being American, would even say it's un-American to not own and shoot guns.

I'm trying to teach as many as I can. I've taken several Mexican and Mexican-American friends to the range. Just last weekend at the range I let some gentlemen from Tamaulipas, Mexico shoot my AR. The three of them had never shot a semi-auto rifle before. I think I was preaching to the choir, though. They were shooting some fancy Rem 700s.

 

[GEM]

San Antonio IDPA is fairly diverse. I see Asian, African-Americans, people of the Jewish faith shooting.

Shooting is expensive and one should consider that in making analyses.

 

[hso]

You'd think a gun shop and indoor range in Knoxville in eastern Tennessee would be a cliche' southern/hillbilly scene that any Anti would salivate at the chance to videotape in hopes of capturing Illiterate White Redneck Racists in their "natural habitat". They'd be sorely disappointed though since they'd find members of all races, all education levels over a huge economic range coming and going, buying firearms and supplies and shooting together on the range. Drive less than an hour to the NW and you'd find a world class gun club/range with a membership with more PhDs than any other education level who's members come from all over the world and are also of any ethnic group.

It depends upon where you live.

 

[coyotehitman]

JohnBT, I guess I just don't see it that way.

 

[ArmedLiberal]

I didn't really think anything of it until reading this post today, but I was in my favorite gun shop (River City Gun Exchange, Sacramento, CA) and there was a man in a wheelchair, a woman getting good instruction from a clerk on selecting a gun and where to get firearms training, and a black man buying ammunition. Seemed pretty normal for Sacramento.

It's also common to see women and all sorts of minority folks at the indoor range I go to.

AL

 

[Owen Sparks]

I live in the an area of the South where statisticly every third person is black. When the gun show comes to town there will be several hundres people in there and often not one black guy. On the rare ocasion there is, he will almost always be off duty law enforcement. I don't think there is anything going on in there that would make anyone feel unwelcome. I have also invited black people to go shoot a few times but they just were not intrested. They just don't seem to grt into shooting sports or hunting yet they seem to like fishing. I usually see lots of black folks fishing at the local lake. Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Beagle-zebub]

So then let's let anti-gun people run aroud unchecked and not take them seriously too.

First, no one is threatening to throw anyone in jail because they said "black" instead of "African-American." Gun control, on the other hand, works on just such a basis.

Unlike with race-baiters, people take anti-gun groups seriously--indeed, gun-control strikes me as unique in how much play its proponents get for how poorly thought-out their arguments are.

 

[harrygunner]

The issue of guns spans a wide area including sports, human rights, politics and basic instincts to survive. So, it's complicated.

I read somewhere that the Black middle class is virtually invisible, in the sense that there is almost no coverage or depiction of it in the media. Maybe that's partly why the OP asked the question about this "invisible" group.

Recently, I stopped even visiting gun site I enjoyed as a member for four years because the site's owner initiated posts that would make any minority member consider the possibility that the "gun community" does not welcome them.

I appreciate the people here at Highroad for handling this issue with considered thoughts, not emotion.