Reuters: African Americans are changing their views on gun control after the Charleston massacre
Tariro Mzezewa and Jessica Dinapoli for Reuters report:
Horace Augustine was raised in Oklahoma City by a mother with strong convictions about guns: She didn’t want them in her house. Faith, she insisted, would keep her family safe.
Augustine, now an account executive with a staffing agency in Atlanta, has recently found himself at odds with his mother’s views: He wants to buy a gun, in part to protect the church he attends….
While it’s not yet clear what effect, if any, the church shooting in Charleston will have on gun purchases, a growing number of African-Americans across the United States have changed their position on firearms in recent years, breaking with a long tradition of gun control advocacy among blacks and embracing the kind of pro-gun positions that are more widely held by whites.
To be sure, attitudes toward guns are still deeply divided along racial lines, with 60 percent of blacks prioritizing controls on gun ownership over protecting gun rights, while 61 percent of whites say they consider gun rights more important than gun controls, according to a December poll by the Pew Reserch Center.
But the level of African American support for gun control has fallen by 14 percentage points since 1993, when it stood at 74% according to the Pew data.
During that same period, the number of blacks prioritizing gun rights over stricter gun controls nearly doubled, up to 34 percent in December from 18 percent in 1993.
Read the full article at Business Insider.
