Anti-Asian hate, COVID-19, white supremacy give rise to skyrocketing gun-buying by AAPI

OPINION

When my father passed away, I was surprised to learn that he owned a 45-cal pistol, a carryover from his days as an U.S. Army officer. Growing up under his roof, he never mentioned he had a firearm. I never saw it.

When my mother asked if I wanted the gun as a keepsake, I turned her down. 

As a former member of the military and as a journalist reporting on deaths by firearms,I've seen what bullets can do to a human body and the carnage that can be caused by a mentally ill person with a gun and I'm aware of the growing number of "accidents" caused by having a gun in the house.

I haven't fired a gun, including a .45-cal pistol similar to my father's gun, since I was in in the U.S. military decades ago. This year, for the first time, I seriously considered buying a gun.

Media reports that gun sales have shot up during the Trump presidency. Trump's ascendency opened society's doors to racial hate by the angry, threatened and easily manipulated segment of America.

“AAPIs are the fastest growing group in the U.S. and also more politically engaged than ever before," Varun Nikore, Executive Director, AAPI Victory Alliance. "Much of this engagement was due to the hate and fear driven by vicious rhetoric spewed against our community."

"If the same right-wing forces that fostered this environment now encourage members of the AAPI community to take up arms as a self-protection measure, that would be the ultimate deadly irony," says Vikore. "The vast majority of Asian Americans are immigrants, or children of immigrants, who are learning what it means to be an American. For far too many, being American means being able to pick up a gun to solve all of their problems. This is a lesson Asian Americans should not and must not learn.”

There is just 60 days left in the year, but it already looks like 2021 is going to be America's deadliest year of gun violence in the last two decades. According to the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 296 mass shootings in the United States this year. A mass shooting is defined as a shooting that results in the killing of 4 or more people.

August, when 1.3 million guns were sold, according to the FBI, makes the month the second-best August on record for gun sales in the United States, exceeded only by 2020. Over the summer leading up to August, there ve been four straight months with gun sales at second-best levels.

The overwhelming majority of gun sales were to white men. However, since the pandemic hit the U.S. in 2020 and the attacks against Asians have continued to surge, gun sales to AAPIs have gone through the roof.

FBI reports of the growth of armed militias and their talk about an armed insurgency against the government have added to the fear darkening the mood of our country.  Going to the grocery, riding the subway, going to school or just taking a walk requires a heightened vigilance that saps too away energy and any good feelings. When every stranger is a possible attacker and every encounter is a potential danger; gangs are targeting AAPI entrepreneurs at their businesses or invading their homes; it is no wonder AAPIs are on edge.

Self-defense classes and whistles don't seem to be enough when the attacker is wielding a gun.

While there is no official data on firearm purchases by Asian Americans, anecdotal evidence from gun owners in a survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) indicated that Asian Americans bought 42% more firearms and ammunition in the first six months of 2020 than they did in the same timeframe the year before.

Gun industry happy

It is not surprising that the gun industry is happy that everyone is so fearful. They profit when Americans are afraid of each other.

Exploiting the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, the gun industry is targeting the Asian American community as potential new gun buyers and future pro-gun advocates, according to How the Firearms Industry Markets Guns to Asian Americans, a recently released study from the Violence Policy Center (VPC).

“Much like the tobacco industry’s search for replacement smokers, the firearms industry is seeking replacement shooters," says Josh Sugarmann, Executive Director, Violence Policy Center. "The targeting of Asian Americans is just the latest example of how gunmakers will cynically exploit any tragedy to fatten their bottom line, regardless of the lethal real-world impact of their actions.”

The firearms industry and gun lobby are currently targeting minority communities in their marketing in response to long-term stagnation in the traditional gun market of white men. This coordinated “diversity” campaign was launched in 2015 at the annual “Industry Summit” held by the gun industry trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).

Until recently, this campaign focused primarily on Black and Latino Americans (for more information, please see the January 2021 VPC study How the Firearms Industry and NRA Market Guns to Communities of Color), but the gun industry has now ramped up its efforts to target Asian Americans.

Asian Americans have low gun ownership rates, strongly support stricter gun laws, and are the fastest growing voter group in the United States. 

As a result of their increasing size and consumer power, Asian Americans are viewed as an untapped market by gunmakers. And in the eyes of the firearms industry and gun lobby, the purchase of a firearm is the first step down the path for new gun owners to become future pro-gun advocates and voters.

In marketing efforts to communities of color, the gun industry frequently focuses on the self-defense use of firearms. The VPC study rebuts these false claims, citing unpublished FBI data showing that in 2019, across the U.S., Asian/Pacific Islanders committed only two firearm justifiable homicides and that, for the five-year period 2015 to 2019, Asian/Pacific Islanders committed only 37 firearm justifiable homicides. During this same five-year period, 3,076 Asian/Pacific Islanders lost their lives in firearm homicides, suicides, fatal unintentional shootings, and other gun deaths: a ratio of 83 to one.

Nevertheless, the study also reveals, using data from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that from 1999 to 2019 more than 10,000 Asian/Pacific Islanders died from guns in the United States.

The VPC study goes on to caution, “For any American, regardless of race or ethnicity, bringing a gun into the home increases the risk of death or injury to the owner or a family member. If the marketing efforts targeting the AAPI community gain traction, the impact will be measured not only in dollars and cents in gunmakers’ coffers, but in increased death and injury among Asian Americans.”

“Historically, Asian Americans have owned very few guns, which is precisely why we have experienced low rates of gun violence," says Gloria Pan, Vice President, MomsRising. "Safety through gun ownership is a myth that gun manufacturers peddle, and one Asian Americans must not succumb to because every credible study has shown that more gun ownership in a community only leads to more gun-related injury and death.

"Guns everywhere do not make any of us safer, and we must do everything possible to thwart the gun industry’s cynical, destructive marketing, not only to Asian Americans but to all Americans.”

But the white supremacist militia's call for armed insurrection grows louder. The threat to democracy is real, according to the FBI.

And the anti-Asian hate is real, the social covenants against racism grow weaker, the racists grow bolder with their actions and words, eating away at our institutions, even the Supreme Court and Congress.

In a sane world it makes the ultimate sense to not have a firearm in the house. But, when people believe that the 2020 election results were not legitimate and break down the doors of the U.S. Capitol; when people gather in Dallas to welcome JFK, who they claim has been alive all this time; when people injecting themselves with a deworming serum believe  it is more effective than a CDC-approved vaccine (ala Aaron Rogers) to fight COVID-19 -- whose to say the world is sane, anymore?

 

And who can argue against one new Asian American gun owner, who when interviewed by ABC News wished to remain anonymous - out of fear. "But to ignore the inconvenient truth that Asians are targets isn't going to stop the attacks," he added. "Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it."

Every. Damn. Day! The insanity is relentless and I grow more tired. Still - after careful consideration, no gun for me.

EDITOR'S NOTE: For additional commentary, raves, reviews and news from an AAPI perspective, follow me on Twitter, @DioknoEd.