https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/07/latino-texas-guns-ownersIn the US, gun purchases by Latinos have surged in recent years – including among self-described progressives. Some are anxious about being armed but feel they have little choice
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the burgeoning Latino Rifle Association (LRA), a self-described progressive organization that sprouted up online during the pandemic to provide self-defense and firearms education to Latinos. Many of the approximately 850 members are worried about the rise of far-right white extremism and an unprecedented wave of mass shootings, while others are looking to connect with gun owners sharing their progressive ideals or Latino identity.
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“Most people wouldn’t bother with firearms if they didn’t think it was necessary – if they didn’t think there were legitimate threats against them,” Hurtado said. “If I never had to worry about being shot, I would never carry.”
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Across the United States, one-fifth of new gun owners are Hispanic. Between 2019 and 2020, gun purchases by Latinos grew nearly 50%, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade association.
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Historically, Hispanic people, Black people and women were the groups least likely to own guns, she said, but now gun ownership has begun to more closely reflect the US population.
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Texas has a long history of anti-Latino sentiment. Organized campaigns of violence against Latinos, such as La Matanza (the Massacre) and La Hora de Sangre (the Hour of Blood), resulted in the lynching of Latinos in Texas during the 19th and 20th centuries. While exact numbers are impossible to confirm, historians estimate hundreds, or even thousands, of Latinos were killed. Latinos not only faced death by gunshot in targeted campaigns, but in the mid-1800s, the capital city of Austin even expelled Mexicans who lacked a white person to vouch for them. In one of the worst massacres of Latinos in US history, 15 villagers in the Rio Grande valley were shot at gunpoint for their alleged link to the Mexican revolution in 1918.
Latinos are still one of the most targeted groups for hate crimes in the US. Last year, Texas saw a 61% increase in white supremacist propaganda, fanning fears that far-right extremism was growing at an accelerated pace in the US’s second-largest state.
More recently, in the Rio Grande valley, LRA members like Isaiah Salas, 27, are beginning to connect this violent history to the current trends of anti-immigrant rhetoric and far-right extremism.
“It really gets you scared, because it’s like, what if I’m next?” asked Salas.
Exactly.
According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey, 81% of Latino immigrants believe restricting gun ownership is more important than protecting gun rights. But for Latinos born in the US, the figure drops to 65%.
What we need is a way to reduce gun ownership among "whites". For example, as I have proposed many times before, anyone who has ever used a gun for hunting should not be allowed to own a gun ever again. (Actually they should be executed.)
Perez is also unsure how law enforcement perceives him as a Latino man wielding a firearm. On average, 200 Hispanic people in the US are killed by police each year, with Hispanic Americans more likely than white people to be fatally shot by police.
Several Latino gun owners wrestle with the fear that simply carrying a gun can lead to unfavorable interactions with the police, who might erroneously read criminal intent into their motivations for having a gun.
The police are among those whom you need your gun to defend yourself from!