http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/10/us/guns-race/index.html?sr=fb101014raceandguns645pstorygalllink
(CNN) -- Here's a thought experiment:
What if large groups of African-American men carrying shotguns and semi-automatic rifles started moseying into stores across America to tout their support of open-carry gun laws?
Would they be greeted by the same anxious looks shoppers gave groups of armed white men who did the same this summer at Target stores and chain restaurants like Chipotle? Or something more lethal?
For Charles Gallagher, a sociologist who studies race, the answer to that "what if" is easy.
"Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1," says Gallagher, a professor at La Salle University in Pennsylvania.
- and the state's murder rate rose.Other academics say Lott's research is faulty.
"The big problem," Lott says, "is that law-abiding good citizens, not criminals, obey the gun control laws."
But are gun proponents like Lott really promoting safety or, as one scholar says, are they selling fear?
Gallagher, the sociologist, says gun producers and the NRA create a perpetual state of fear so that people can buy their products. An NRA spokesman, Andrew Arulanandam, was repeatedly contacted but declined to answer questions submitted for this article.
"The line is that more guns will make us safer," Gallagher says. "That means that every single person in the U.S. has to be armed. Do we want to live in that world?"
Gallagher cites his own research: Studies show that making guns more available, such as in the home, increases the chance of gun deaths. A study released by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center says that where there are more guns in a home there is more homicide.
Minority kids disproportionately impacted by zero-tolerance laws
All about the bogeyman
When some gun control advocates look at the nation's passion for guns, they see the same racial fears that drove previous generations to enact black codes. These fears, they say, are passed down, like genes, from one generation to another.
The big problem is that law-abiding good citizens, not criminals, obey the gun control laws.
John R. Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws."
Others disagree, and say it's not always about race. They point to the thriving gun culture in parts of the country that have no experience with slavery or black codes.
"Why are people in Montana, who rarely encounter black people, so attached to their guns?" Cottrol asks. "People in Vermont are very attached to their guns and it's the whitest state in the Union."
Guns would have been a huge part of the 19th century Southern way of life even without slavery, another gun rights advocate says.
"Virtually all of them would have owned guns anyway," says Kopel, "given the necessities of rural life, including the importance of hunting to put food on the table, to protect isolated farmers from white criminals, and to protect crops from predators."
Gallagher says those arguments are misleading.
"There's a difference between gun culture and hunting culture," he says. "They're talking about hunting in Montana. They're not talking about walking into a Wal-Mart with a 9-millimeter strapped to their back."
Gallagher says he's not accusing every white person who buys a gun of being a racist; he's accusing them of being human, of unconsciously absorbing stereotypical attitudes about black men and violence that are as old as America itself.
"Do I think that people who own guns lie in bed at night thinking about shooting a black man? No," Gallagher says. "A lot of this is about the bogeyman, the fear that a young black man is going to come and get me."
These old racial fears don't just lead to shootings; they lead to racist public policy, says Lisa Corrigan, professor at the University of Arkansas who has studied the black power movement.
She says the passage of "stand your ground" laws, especially in the South, are "absolutely" fueled by white legislators who conjure the specter of a "non-white bogeyman to justify legislation that allows them to intimidate and kill" without repercussions. The nation's first bogeyman of color was the Native-American, she says.
"White people have been motivated by fear of the 'brown other' since the nation was founded," she says. "When they get afraid that brown people are going to take their stuff, they gun up."
The racial paranoia over the "brown other" isn't confined to America's past, Corrigan and others says. They point to recent headlines.
Protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, when an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was shot to death by a white police officer this summer.
Those protests continue, and each week seems to bring a new viral video that raises questions about guns and race.
There's footage of an unarmed young black man shot to death by a white police officer in an Ohio Walmart while swinging a toy rifle at his side and talking on a cell phone. And there's the dash cam recording of a black man being shot by a white South Carolina trooper as he reached for his license during a traffic stop.
Did any of those shootings have anything to do with race?
It depends on who you ask.
When so many Americans disagree about the links between gun and race, well-meaning people look at the same videos and draw far different conclusions.
That can only mean more controversial shootings, impassioned defenses of the Second Amendment and angry charges of racism.
There may be a lot more people asking "what if" in America's future.
Opinion: America's gun problem is not a race problem
(CNN) -- Here's a thought experiment:
What if large groups of African-American men carrying shotguns and semi-automatic rifles started moseying into stores across America to tout their support of open-carry gun laws?
Would they be greeted by the same anxious looks shoppers gave groups of armed white men who did the same this summer at Target stores and chain restaurants like Chipotle? Or something more lethal?
For Charles Gallagher, a sociologist who studies race, the answer to that "what if" is easy.
"Whites walking down Main Street with an AK-47 are defenders of American values; a black man doing the same thing is Public Enemy No. 1," says Gallagher, a professor at La Salle University in Pennsylvania.
- and the state's murder rate rose.Other academics say Lott's research is faulty.
"The big problem," Lott says, "is that law-abiding good citizens, not criminals, obey the gun control laws."
But are gun proponents like Lott really promoting safety or, as one scholar says, are they selling fear?
Gallagher, the sociologist, says gun producers and the NRA create a perpetual state of fear so that people can buy their products. An NRA spokesman, Andrew Arulanandam, was repeatedly contacted but declined to answer questions submitted for this article.
"The line is that more guns will make us safer," Gallagher says. "That means that every single person in the U.S. has to be armed. Do we want to live in that world?"
Gallagher cites his own research: Studies show that making guns more available, such as in the home, increases the chance of gun deaths. A study released by the Harvard Injury Control Research Center says that where there are more guns in a home there is more homicide.
Minority kids disproportionately impacted by zero-tolerance laws
All about the bogeyman
When some gun control advocates look at the nation's passion for guns, they see the same racial fears that drove previous generations to enact black codes. These fears, they say, are passed down, like genes, from one generation to another.
The big problem is that law-abiding good citizens, not criminals, obey the gun control laws.
John R. Lott, author of "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws."
Others disagree, and say it's not always about race. They point to the thriving gun culture in parts of the country that have no experience with slavery or black codes.
"Why are people in Montana, who rarely encounter black people, so attached to their guns?" Cottrol asks. "People in Vermont are very attached to their guns and it's the whitest state in the Union."
Guns would have been a huge part of the 19th century Southern way of life even without slavery, another gun rights advocate says.
"Virtually all of them would have owned guns anyway," says Kopel, "given the necessities of rural life, including the importance of hunting to put food on the table, to protect isolated farmers from white criminals, and to protect crops from predators."
Gallagher says those arguments are misleading.
"There's a difference between gun culture and hunting culture," he says. "They're talking about hunting in Montana. They're not talking about walking into a Wal-Mart with a 9-millimeter strapped to their back."
Gallagher says he's not accusing every white person who buys a gun of being a racist; he's accusing them of being human, of unconsciously absorbing stereotypical attitudes about black men and violence that are as old as America itself.
"Do I think that people who own guns lie in bed at night thinking about shooting a black man? No," Gallagher says. "A lot of this is about the bogeyman, the fear that a young black man is going to come and get me."
These old racial fears don't just lead to shootings; they lead to racist public policy, says Lisa Corrigan, professor at the University of Arkansas who has studied the black power movement.
She says the passage of "stand your ground" laws, especially in the South, are "absolutely" fueled by white legislators who conjure the specter of a "non-white bogeyman to justify legislation that allows them to intimidate and kill" without repercussions. The nation's first bogeyman of color was the Native-American, she says.
"White people have been motivated by fear of the 'brown other' since the nation was founded," she says. "When they get afraid that brown people are going to take their stuff, they gun up."
The racial paranoia over the "brown other" isn't confined to America's past, Corrigan and others says. They point to recent headlines.
Protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri, when an unarmed black man, Michael Brown, was shot to death by a white police officer this summer.
Those protests continue, and each week seems to bring a new viral video that raises questions about guns and race.
There's footage of an unarmed young black man shot to death by a white police officer in an Ohio Walmart while swinging a toy rifle at his side and talking on a cell phone. And there's the dash cam recording of a black man being shot by a white South Carolina trooper as he reached for his license during a traffic stop.
Did any of those shootings have anything to do with race?
It depends on who you ask.
When so many Americans disagree about the links between gun and race, well-meaning people look at the same videos and draw far different conclusions.
That can only mean more controversial shootings, impassioned defenses of the Second Amendment and angry charges of racism.
There may be a lot more people asking "what if" in America's future.
Opinion: America's gun problem is not a race problem
as a people
