The Gun Control Debate Needs to be More Intersectional

From before it was founded, the United States has been associated with violence. Gun violence is one of many forms of violence that is currently and has historically disproportionately targeted people of color. 

Gun violence also goes beyond mass shootings and school shootings. It has roots in colonialism and white supremacy, and it can be seen as a tool for society to control and eliminate people of color. One way that white supremacy actively uses guns to control and eliminate people of color, particularly Black people, is through police brutality. The racial bias that law enforcement subconsciously or consciously hold is not accidental, but rather, is linked to a deeply historical need of the white man to punish people of color for their so-called “deviancy”, or difference from/defiance of the white appearance and ways of life.

Our awareness of this fact is vital to understanding how we address gun violence. In reaction to modern day mass gun violence, many politicians, academics, and mainstream media outlets tend to advocate for solutions that involve gun control and mental health. While gun control is very important for preventing radicalized white supremacists from obtaining guns and increased access to mental health resources can help soothe anger and fear that may drive the actions of mass shooters, these are band-aid solutions to the real problem.

Gun control measures that do not account for systemic white supremacy will lead to further criminalization of people of color, fueling the prison industrial complex, rather than reducing gun violence. Gun control laws will protect mostly white people, leaving people of color to fend for themselves against the Police State. Therefore, it is imperative that gun control advocates understand how white supremacy and colonialism can be embedded in solutions to gun violence.

White America and Power

Gun violence and gun control are mostly about preserving white power and controlling people of color and Indigenous peoples. 

Many white Americans fear the revolutionary power of people of color and Indigenous peoples. Feminist theory, political organizing, and even the mere existence of “non-white” people are highly effective at disrupting white control and threatening white ways of life. 

How does white supremacy quell this disruption? White America uses violent punishment and criminalization of people of color and Indigenous peoples to preserve the status quo. 

When Europeans first arrived in the Americas, they saw Indigenous people as threats to capitalism, extractionism, and land ownership. Colonialists used this reasoning to to violently conquer their lands, commit widespread sexual violence, kill thousands, and cause severe environmental degradation. 

Conquest transitioned to enslavement. Because white people felt the mere existence of people of color challenged white superiority, they used slavery to violently incapacitate  and commodify Black and Indigenous peoples in order to establish their financial power. In Are Prisons Obsolete, Angela Davis uses Moses Grandy’s account of slave punishment to show that slave masters saw Blackness as a source of deviance. Slave masters would force pregnant women to lay on the ground with their stomachs in holes to protect what slave masters saw as future slave labor. 

When plantation slavery was abolished, the police (and the government) inherited the role of the slave master. The Netflix documentary 13th argues that Jim Crow was used to justify the continuance of the idea of white superiority by codifying racialized poverty and “separate but equal” into law. During the Civil Rights Movement, the government and its white constituents were so threatened by the destruction of Jim Crow, that it used state-sponsored intelligence organizations to spy on, undermine, criminalize, and even pursue physical violence against the Black Panther Party and other activist groups.

As more laws were passed to protect the rights of people of color in the United States, white people turned to law and order to control Black and Brown bodies. According to the 13th documentary, the government declared a war on drugs, which was used to target people of color. At the same time, neoliberalism became increasingly popular, which led to the proliferation of money in politics and the rise of the prison industrial complex. Corporations like Walmart and lobbyist groups like the National Rifle Association began to fund mass incarceration. They justified their profits by implying that Black and brown people deserved punishment for their inherent deviance. Many corporations even use Black and brown people as free or low-cost labor. According to the 13th documentary, this is a form of modern-day slavery.

White America and Guns

The US has a long history of using guns to commit violence against people of color (particularly Black people), while simultaneously ensuring that people of color do not have access to equivalent and powerful tools for which they can use to defend themselves against white violence.

White narratives of the so-called “defiance” and “criminality” of people of color are hugely relevant to the gun control debate, yet not widely talked about because of a coordinated attempt to hide racist rhetoric from those who could fight back. Every time the mainstream media heavily reports on mass shootings and police violence against people of color, the National Rifle Association collaborates with other conservative entities to incite white fear of Black and brown deviance through ad campaigns, lobbying, and spreading of misinformation online. This is because the NRA and its partners profit from fear of gun control. When gun control is in the news and in politics, or when gun rights are threatened, the NRA and other conservative entities receive an increased flow of donations from white conservatives and some liberals, who see guns as self-defense against criminals. Because people of color are most likely to be criminalized by the prison industrial complex according to the 13th documentary, the fear of losing Second Amendment rights for many white people stems from the fear of people of color. 

But many times it is more than that. Because white people have historically had easier and more access to guns, they have used them as tools to overpower people of color, especially during times of civil unrest, because white people fear a revolution against white supremacy. Losing this right would make white people much weaker against the power and resilience of people of color.

On the flip side, many liberal networks and information sources view gun control as a means of ensuring safety across the United States. While this may be true in some cases, gun control has been used as a means to prevent people of color from rebelling against white supremacy. 

In a Wall Street Journal article, UCLA Constitutional Law scholar Adam Winkler argues that “the KKK began as a gun-control organization. Before the Civil War, blacks were never allowed to own guns…It was a constant pressure among white racists to keep guns out of the hands of African-Americans, because they would rise up and revolt…If blacks were disarmed, they couldn’t fight back.” 

This fear of Black people having guns, which can be extended to all people of color, results from their socially constructed criminalization and association with poverty, infighting, incivility, and defiance. 

Given that gun control has been used to prevent challenges to white power, that white people only seem to care about gun control because gun violence is affecting their communities, and that police gun violence is being sidelined within the conversation about gun control, it is widely believed within communities of color and Indigenous communities that gun control will not stop violence against them (see the National African American Gun Association, Latino Rifle Association, Yellow Peril Tactical, and others). 

Because current ideas of gun control lack historical context, intersectionality, or an understanding of how our government disproportionately monitors people of color, “common sense” gun control measures that the corporate-funded media and the March for Our Lives activists promote will likely disproportionately target and criminalize people of color. In fact, there are many cultural organizations teaching people of color how to fight against white supremacy (again see the National African American Gun Association, Latino Rifle Association, Yellow Peril Tactical, and others). 

Because of white fear of people of color having guns, gun control will likely criminalize these organizing efforts, rendering many people of color unable to defend themselves against police brutality and other forms of colonial violence. Further, without any kind of discussion about white supremacy and colonialism, gun control legislation will support the enslavement of people of color into the prison industrial complex. The removal of their rights to fight back and organize against our increasingly fascist government will uphold white supremacist power in society.