Gun Ownership, Concealed-Carry Permits Up Among Women and Minorities
Antonia Okafor, a Dallas resident, says she believes a gun can be the great equalizer for women to defend themselves—one reason she is now the southwest regional director for a group called Students for Concealed Carry.
State laws allowing residents to carry concealed weapons have been enacted in all 50 states, with varying degrees of regulation—most recently on college campuses.
“We see ourselves as doing this as a means of empowerment,” Okafor, 26, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.
“Real feminism is about empowerment and taking our safety into our own hands.”
Okafor, who is black, said more female role models, such as Olympic gold medalist Kim Rhode, have inspired more gun ownership among women.
But Okafor—a graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas, where she became involved in the movement—said her mother is opposed to guns.
In an April poll by ABC News of issues millennial women are most concerned about, gun rights scored even with equal pay and abortion, each getting 11 percent.
A study by the Crime Prevention Research Center earlier this month found concealed-carry permits have boomed nationally, but particularly among women and minorities. “In eight states where we have data by gender, since 2012 the number of permits has increased by 161 percent for women and by 85 percent for men,” the report says.
From 2007 through 2015, concealed-carry permits issued by state and local governments increased about 75 percent faster among nonwhites than whites, according to the report.
Okafor noted that those living in the inner city “are the most likely to benefit” from self-defense.
“A lot of minority homes didn’t have father figures growing up,” Okafor told The Daily Signal.
“The right to bear arms is a way to protect our community. Every weekend people are dying in cities riddled with gun control.”
Okafor said increasing gun ownership could mark a political shift among both women and minorities away from pro-gun control Democrats to pro-gun rights Republicans in the longer term.
However, JaQuan Taylor, a senior at Georgia Tech, is a Democrat and president of the college group that advocates allowing students and faculty to carry concealed firearms while on campus. Taylor, who is black, said he doesn’t plan on switching parties, but he is more open now.
“It’s more challenging for me to pick a politician that wants to take away guns or prohibit them in anyway,” Taylor, 22, told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “I vote for the person more than the party, but I usually vote Democrat because they are pro-education. Since I’ve gotten a gun, I’ve begun to look at Republicans.”
Taylor said he joined a marksmanship club at Georgia Tech and then “became comfortable with getting a gun to protect myself.”
He said he believes as more African-Americans learn about gun laws, more are buying for self-defense.
He doesn’t see the gun issue as a left-right matter, but more of an issue of freedom, Taylor said.
“It seems like with the push for gay marriage, there is a push for freedom in all directions. That’s a good thing,” he said.
The data on women and minorities should come as no surprise, said Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott, a noted economist and author of the recent book, “The War on Guns.”
“Women benefit more from having a gun than a man because of the large strength differential between a male-to-woman attacker compared to [a] male-to-male attacker,” Lott, the author of the August study, told The Daily Signal.
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