There’s Nothing Racist About Gun Safety

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The following is a slightly edited transcript of remarks made by Ellis Henican during a Newsweek debate on the racist nature of gun control laws. You can listen to the podcast here:

I’m all for anything that has less of these military-style weapons in civilian hands. Our current experience of flooding America with guns anytime, anywhere, and for any people has been a disaster. I am very slow to accuse people of racism. I’m for regulating these guns, and I don’t think I’m being racist, and I don’t think the people who support this are doing it out of some kind of racial animosity. Jeff is correct that there is more gun violence in the black community per capita, but those numbers are really interesting. For example, the states with the highest firearm homicide rates are all the top five red states. Mississippi, my home state of Louisiana (a big gun spot), Alabama and Missouri. You have to go up to number eight before you get to Illinois and New York, where I am right now. Where everyone is hysterical about crime (I think it’s 32nd in the rate of gun homicides). So our stereotypes that this is a problem in urban areas, the numbers just don’t back it up.

A child is pictured pulling a handgun out of a school backpack in this undated file photo. A 6-year-old elementary school student was taken into custody in Newport News, Va., on Friday after allegedly shooting his first-grade teacher with a handgun during an “altercation.” Smederevac/Getty Images

The courts don’t say you can’t regulate the types of guns people own under the First Amendment. We’ve had court support for all kinds of limitations on the types of guns people own. I mean, you can’t have a bazooka, you can’t have a hydrogen bomb, and for years you couldn’t have one of those assault weapons. So there’s no conflict between the Second Amendment and legislatures saying, “hey, there’s some kind of guns that are just too crazy and too dangerous to put in civilian hands.” Let’s talk about how these weapons end up illegally in the hands of citizens who use them for evil purposes. What happens in the vast majority of cases is that they are purchased legally in states where they are freely open for sale. They come to my home state of Louisiana, they buy a whole bunch of guns at Walmart, then truck them to other places where there are laws and sell them. So while it is illegal for them to be there, the fact that firearms are so readily available in so many parts of our country makes it very difficult to effectively regulate these state-by-state controls. God, you have so many guns, people are shooting at each other all the time. We have to take these weapons out of the hands of these people. We shouldn’t make it easier, or more plentiful, or more powerful, or expand the number of people who can get it, or eliminate background checks, or any reasonable gun safety rules in which I would like my gun-loving friends to join me.

Why don’t we talk about what we should be on so we can agree. I mean, I would never get you to agree that you shouldn’t have 50 guns in your house. But hopefully I can agree to you on a reasonable background check system, on a process where you have to show that you know how to use the gun the same way we need a driver’s license , and some ability to safely use the firearm. We could stop interstate theft and transport by requiring smart weapons where it only works if your fingerprint matches the actual weapon, so if it’s stolen it would just be a useless piece of steel. We should at least be able to agree on those kinds of basic security measures. We have a problem there. And absolutist no-nothing-never solutions don’t serve us very well.

Ellis Henican is a New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

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