AP Photo/Philip Kamrass, File

Key Takeaways

• Gun control disproportionately harms poor Black and Hispanic communities.

• Mandatory permits and training inflate costs, blocking lawful gun ownership.

• Civil rights include self-defense, not just speech or voting.

It’s amazing how the same people who scream about “equity” suddenly lose their voices whenever the Second Amendment enters the conversation. The facts aren’t subtle: gun control burdens poor inner-city minorities while the gated-community wine-and-cheese crowd preaches “responsibility.” Training mandates, permit fees, bureaucratic hoops—every single step prices out the very Americans most likely to need self-defense.

In neighborhoods plagued by gangs and predatory crime, a firearm isn’t a “luxury,” it’s survival. Telling a single mom in a dangerous zip code she must spend hundreds on permits and classes to defend her family is not “safety,” it’s modern-class discrimination dressed up as compassion.

Gun rights are civil rights precisely because they protect the vulnerable, not the privileged. And the more Democrats layer costs and red tape, the more they quietly deny those rights to Americans without a spare $600 lying around. Rights don’t belong only to the rich—they belong to everyone. Period.

From Bearing Arms:

Saying that gun rights are civil rights shouldn’t be controversial. After all, most of what we term as civil liberties are enshrined in the Bill of Rights, from freedom of speech and religion to protection against illegal search and seizure, and many others. The Second Amendment is smack dab in the middle of all of those. Saying the right to keep and bear arms is a civil right isn’t controversial; it’s obvious.

But some people can’t seem to wrap their gray matter around that. The impact of gun laws in general falls disproportionately on black and Hispanic men, even. And, in a world where people see disparity of outcomes as proof of racism, then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate all gun control laws.

Granted, I’m not someone who ascribes to that personally. I think it can be evidence of racism, but it’s not always. At least not directly, anyway.

But the truth is that gun control doesn’t affect the wealthy, white people living in their little gated communities nearly as harshly as it does in poorer black and Hispanic neighborhoods. These are where gangs try to rule, where theft and violence is just a way of life, and where people feel like they have no avenues to turn to.

Gun rights give them the power to hold firm against the worst of the worst. It gives them the ability to protect what’s theirs, including their family, in an area that bears more than a passing resemblance to third-world hellholes that none of us want anything to do with.

Gun control, on the contrary, disempowers them.

Let’s consider, for a moment, what some popular gun control measures mean for poorer communities, which are disproportionately black or Hispanic.

Training requirements are a popular one, either for a carry permit or for a permit to purchase–we’ll get to those in a moment–and it sounds good to a lot of people. I mean, why not make sure people who have or carry guns know how to use them correctly and effectively?

The problem is that training requirements mean someone has to pay for a trainer. They might be charitable men or women, but running classes takes time and money on their part, and they can’t be expected to do it for free. Not all the time, anyway. So how do these people who can barely afford a firearm supposed to also pay for training?

Especially since the training may well take place outside of their community, beyond where public transportation goes? There aren’t a ton of inner-city gun ranges, after all, in part because cities aren’t fond of allowing them to open up.

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