ABSTRACT
Black people have always been in the crosshairs of racist America. Histories of Black women's armed resistance command public attention today, amidst an unprecedented surge in firearm purchases, and in which Black women purportedly play a significant role. While anecdotal evidence suggests that gun ownership among women and people of color is on the rise, reliable data on Black women's patterns of gun acquisition, specifically their attitudes towards guns and gun ownership, remain scarce. For opportunistic corporate and legislative partners in contemporary neoliberal “gun rights” orthodoxy, appeals to the special vulnerabilities of women and non-white people prove expedient. According to some researchers who study patterns in gun consumption and use, the contemporary “gun culture” is characterized by a shift to “Gun Culture 2.0” in which guns are perceived as essential to one's safety and self-defense, rather than as tools of recreation or hunting/subsistence.
