A different prospective

By Nelson Graves
Published: July 3, 2008

I’ll be up front – I don’t like or agree with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the Washington, D.C., handgun restriction law.
The little help the handgun restriction allowed D.C. residents, administrators and police department has been undone by the National Rifle Association and its lobby. Citing the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the NRA and other pro-gun owners won a significant battle.
A few days after the Supreme Court’s decision, the NRA’s attorney who argued before the Court immediately filed suits to overturn similarly restrictive gun ownership laws in Chicago and San Francisco.
Begun as an organization to supplement the state of New York following the Civil War, the NRA’s membership is made up mostly of white men. The organization today, as it did when first organized, still promotes target shooting and the safe use of firearms.
As I’ve stated before, if a person wants to own a handgun for target shooting or rifle(s) for target shooting and hunting, it’s fine with me. What I do object to is the ease of almost anyone to obtain either kind of weapon without restriction — or rather, with very limited restrictions.
From a racial prospective, when people of color carry handguns, the odds of being shot by mistake are higher than when whites carry them.
A previous column, in which I opposed allowing firearms on college campuses, drew a phone call from a local reader. Using the Virginia Tech shooting as an example of college students needing access to guns, he asked if I’d oppose my daughters having a gun on campus. I told him I did.
Astounded, he wanted to know why. I explained that if one of my daughters had had a gun on Tech’s grounds the day of the shooting, and exited one of Tech’s buildings with a gun in hand, she’d more than likely be fired upon.
The caller, a former officer, disagreed, saying today’s officers are trained not to do that. As I told him, that may be true, but recent circumstances prove otherwise. Not only are black civilians accidentally shot, so are black policemen.
There have been four incidents (posted on the Internet) of undercover or off-duty black police officers being shot this year. In three of the cases, the officer died.
Following the New York state shooting, Damon Jones, the Westchester County director of the National Black Police Association, said, “If you are a black police officer off-duty with a gun, you’re a thug. If you’re a white police officer off-duty, you are a detective.”
If for no other reason than that blacks in D.C. will now be shot accidentally, the Supreme Court’s decision was wrong.
Nelson Graves writes a weekly column for The News Virginian and is Western Virginia director of the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council. E-mail him at .