Zimmerman, Race and Gun Control

A recent poll shows that most whites approve of the Zimmerman verdict, while more than three-quarters  of African Americans believe it was unjust.  Another recent Washington Post poll shows that, several months after the Newtown, Connecticut mass shooting, more whites oppose new gun control measures than support them, while over three-quarters of African Americans want more gun control.   Attitudes toward gun control are relevant because outrage about the verdict seems to rest in part on the fact that Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin with a gun.  Had Martin been killed by a punch or by hitting his head on a rock after a shove, I suspect that the reaction might have been different.  If this is right, then it will be difficult to bridge the gap because the different experiences with firearms between the African American and white communities predictably generate different perspectives.

According to the Washington Post poll, whites are just over 50% as likely as African Americans to be shot to death--90 per million per year, versus 178 per million for African Americans.  But the circumstances are very different; most white firearm fatalities are suicides--75 out of 90, while a supermajority of African Americans who are killed by firearms die from homicide, 151 out of 178.  African Americans are ten times more likely to die from homicide than are whites.   These differences  suggest a reason behind racially divergent attitudes toward guns.   Prevention of suicide may be a less compelling ratonale for gun regulation than is the prevention of homicide, but more fundamentally, to prevent suicide through gun control would require a prohibition of private ownership even in the home, even of even rifles and shotguns, something never adopted in even in the most pro-gun control jurisdictions.

There are also very different racial experiences of the use of firearms for sport and recreation.  Non-whites hunt and shoot for fun at a far lower rate than their representation in the U.S. population--a 2006 Fish and Wildlife Service study reported that African Americans were 11% of the U.S. population, but less than 1.5% of hunters.  Whites, then, are much more likely to use firearms for recreational purposes and much less likely to be the victim of homicide; it is not surprising that more of them think of guns as basically good or neutral.  The African American community has a more consistent experience of weapons as being principally used to harm human beings; no wonder, then, that more of them think the fewer firearms in private hands the better.