by James A. Bacon
In 2018, according to the Virginia State Police Crime in Virginia report, law enforcement authorities reported 305 juveniles and 3,931 adults arrested for “weapon law violations.” If Democrats tighten gun control laws and vigorously enforce them, we can be reasonably sure that the number of arrests will increase.
That could put Dems in an awkward place. As Cam Edwards points out on National Review, the most enthusiastic enforcement of the new laws will be in Democratic-controlled localities with high crime rates — Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, and Roanoke. Rural counties that have declared themselves Second Amendment sanctuaries predictably will enforce the laws with less enthusiasm. Writes Edwards:
The vast majority of charges will be for non-violent possessory offenses, the vast majority of defendants will be black and Hispanic men from Virginia’s inner cities, and the vast majority of those defendants will not have any serious criminal history, although they may be heading down that road. Instead of offering these individuals a way out, however, Ralph Northam wants to give them a crash course in criminality by putting them in prison.
Wouldn’t that be ironic? Democrats are trying to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline and reform the criminal justice system to reduce the disproportionate percentage of minorities behind bars. Yet, if Edwards is right, their gun control laws could disproportionately impact minorities.
Of course, there is a lot of supposition in Edwards’ argument. Let’s look at the numbers.
The Crime in Virginia report provides a breakdown by locality. Petersburg (population 32,000) reported 293 weapons law arrests — or 7% of the total for the entire state. The City of Roanoke reported 476 arrests, Norfolk 577 arrests, and the City of Richmond 1,328 arrests. Those four inner-city localities, where the majority of arrestees are black, account for 63% of all weapon law violations in the entire state.
Statewide, according to the searchable Virginia State Police database, 969 whites were convicted for weapons offenses while 809 blacks were convicted. In 2018, whites comprised 77.4% of the population while blacks comprised 18.8% of the population. In other words, blacks are arrested for weapons offenses at roughly three times the rate of whites. (It’s worth noting that while most weapons law violations are for guns, not all are.)
Using the liberal/progressive logic that disproportionate impact equals discrimination, we can see that existing gun control laws impact African-Americans far more negatively than whites and, therefore, ipso facto, such laws constitute a form of institutional racism.
Rather than repeal racist gun-control legislation, Governor Ralph Northam proposes adding new restrictions:
- Requiring background checks on all firearms sales and transactions.
- Banning assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, bump stocks and silencers.
- Creating an Extreme Risk Protective Order to temporarily segregate a person from firearms if they present a threat to themselves or others.
- Prohibiting individuals subject to final protective orders from possessing firearms.
- Enhancing the punishment for allowing access to loaded, unsecured firearms by a child, and raising the age of the child from 14 to 18.
- Enabling localities to enact firearm ordinances stricter than the state law, including the regulation of firearms in municipal buildings, libraries and permitted events.
The question arises, will these measures disproportionately impact African-Americans, as other gun-control laws do? It should be possible to gather data on at least one indicator — the racial breakdown of individuals subject to final protective orders (or restraining orders). In 2017, a total of 55,376 emergency protective orders were issued, according to the 2018 Annual Report on Domestic and Sexual Violence in Virginia. That’s a lot of people who could be denied their gun rights. That report did not break down the incidence of sexual violence, domestic violence or protective orders by race/ethnicity. But that data should be available — if legislators want to ask for it.
Nationally, according to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey 2010 Summary Report, 43.7% of non-Hispanic black women have been the victim of rape, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. That compares to 34.6% of white non-Hispanic women. Presumably, protective orders would be issued to curtail access to firearms by the partners of black women more frequently than the partners of white women. In other words, more black men would have their rights curtailed than white men.
On the other hand, white adults experience mental illness with greater frequency than blacks — 20.4% compared to 16.2%, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. So, it’s likely that whites would have their gun rights abridged for mental illness than blacks.
It’s difficult to know whether domestic violence would outweigh mental illness in issuing protective orders from possessing firearms, but surely this is something Virginia’s Democratic Party legislators would want to know before they enact legislation that might compound the inequitable rate at which blacks and whites are incarcerated. We’ll find out soon whether Democratic Party lawmakers are more serious about reducing gun violence or reducing the rate of African-American incarceration.
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