Minorities in the NRA

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zahc

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It's never crossed mind before, but I'm arguing with someone and they asked (jokingly) if minoritys are allowed to join the NRA. I was wondering if there was any data on NRA membership that would be helpful.
 
I know that. But I was wondering about racial makeup of NRA membership.


*Realization sinks in* wait....is he really?
 
No shortages of minorities, but as to your question, only the NRA knows - but I doubt even that since there's no "circle" the race box on any NRA application.
 
Funny, in order for me to get the info, the NRA would have to do that, you know, put a race thing in thier stuff.

I always leave those blank.
 
Yes, he really is.

Maybe this will help....
The Urban Affairs Committee is charged with increasing NRA membership among minorities. No small task, judging by the preponderance of white people at the convention this weekend.

But this right here is a very diverse group of blacks, whites and Hispanics. The featured speaker is Roy Innis, chairman of the Urban Affairs Committee and the national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality.

Before his talk, Innis asks the folks in the room to introduce themselves. A black woman from Miami says her friends were surprised she would attend an NRA function, given that the street-level wisdom says the NRA is comprised of "racist, sexist, evil, old white men."

Innis takes the podium and gives a brief outline of the NRA's beginnings. The group dates to 1871, when Union veterans William Church and George Wingate got together to commiserate on their shared observation that Rebs were better shots than Yankees. Thus, notes Innis, who is black, the NRA has been aligned with the cause of racial equality since its beginnings. But somehow, the public image has slipped, he says. "How is it possible that with a start like that, the public image of the NRA has become so contorted?" he wonders.
Click to expand...

http://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/story.asp?ID=3928
 
For many years, the NRA Member's Council chapter in the Santa Clara County area had a black President (name of Darryl Davis if I recall right).

The NRA has LONG since shed any institutional racism. There may be a few individuals here and there but truthfully, the general anti-gun climate has driven ALL gunnies closer together. (That said, the evidence of institutional NRA racism from approximately 1920 - 1940 or so is quite strong. But then, so were the Boy Scouts and all the rest of US society :barf:.)

One member of the Pink Pistols has publicly said that it's easier to come out as gay to other gunnies than to come out to other gays as a gunnie! (There have been efforts to direct NRA "Cease To Be A Victim" training at the gay/lesbian communities, so it's not just the PP involved.)

So if even homophobia is limited in the gun world, that bodes quite well for race relations.
 
For your argument you can point out that JC Watts and Karl Malone have both been NRA spokesmen.
 
The NRA doesn't descriminate against anyone. It isn't about race, it's about guns. What difference does it make what race you are?

Jm Hall
 
I'm a minority (Chinese/Vietnamese, born in Orlando, FL), and I'm an NRA member. Didn't have enough money for the Life membership, but I ponied up for the three year membership.

Though there are still racist people out there, I should hope that the majority of the neo-Nazi types are out somewhere else...far, far away :). I just remember the picture from Oleg's site - "the fight for freedom makes for strange bedfellows...hang together, lest we hang separately..."

Even a slightly prejudiced guy would probably instantly warm up to a minority of any race/religion/sexual orientation when they start talking guns. .45 vs. .40 vs. 9mm? AR vs. AK? FAL vs. M1A vs. G3? Stuff like this tends to bond gunnies together.
 
Ive been in the NRA for several years and have never received any material where they asked my age ,sex or race.
 
At the Costa Mesa CA gun show every couple of months, we run the NRA recruiting booth at the entrance. My rough guess at show attendance breakdown would be 5% African-American, 20% Hispanic, 20% Asian, 50% 'white', 5% unable to classify. About 65-35 male-female (most of the latter with a male companion.) That's about the breakdown of Orange County, BTW, except for fewer Hispanics and more Asians.

Our recruiting runs about the same, but NEW memberships are higher percentage 'minority'; about 1/2 our 'white' sign ups are renewals. Very encouraging, especially when a father-mother-son-daughter all join at once - it's happened maybe 3 times this year while I was in the booth, and one of the groups was black, one asian, one white.

When I do see some of our older guys look askance at people, it's always the STYLE, not the color that bugs them; I tell them, hey, OUR parents thought WE were freaks back in the day, remember.:rolleyes: :evil: :D
 
It's worth noting that the "culture of law-abiding self defense" was driven out of the black community by draconian gun control for our nation's entire *history*, and continues today. It is no accident that the areas with strictest gun control also have high black populations: Chicago, DC, NYC, LA, Oakland, St. Louis and until recently, Detroit. And lots more.

This "deliberate cultural damage" will take a long time more to heal. Until it does, those communities can't take proper charge of their own neigborhoods, their cultures, their destinies.

Sigh.
 
Why do you think the NRA is hated by hard core leftists so much?

The "gun culture" seems to be an almost utopian society where race, sex, sexual orientation, age, and religeon do not cause barriers between people sharing a heritage, a civil right, or just talking with eachother over their equipment. All of the intrusive social engineering to date has not come anywhere near accomplishing this.:neener:
 
It is also worth noting that during the worst days of the Civil Rights Movment, when blacks were being attacked. It was the NRA who helped train blacks to use firearms for their own defense and helped them protect their right to bear arms.
Charleton Heston even marched with Dr. King. Considering the violence of the time and King's ultimate fate, is quite fair to say that Heston put his life on the line for civil rights.
 
I went to the NRA Philadelphia show a couple of years ago. Place was filled with old white guys.

Got to meet Rex Applegate.
 
It's worth noting that the "culture of law-abiding self defense" was driven out of the black community by draconian gun control for our nation's entire *history*, and continues today. It is no accident that the areas with strictest gun control also have high black populations: Chicago, DC, NYC, LA, Oakland, St. Louis and until recently, Detroit. And lots more.
Click to expand...

That's only fitting, as the first gun control law passed on this continent required whites to own firearms but prohibited all blacks, free or slaves, from even possessing them.

Gun control = racism.
 
It's never crossed mind before, but I'm arguing with someone and they asked (jokingly) if minoritys are allowed to join the NRA.
Click to expand...

I dunno, they let me in.... :p

Well, we aren't really the minority, further proof that greasy food and carbs aren't bad or else there wouldn't be 1.3 billion of us....
 
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