The View held an interesting discussion on gun ownership and whether more blacks owning guns should be celebrated or reviled. Joy Behar started off by pointing out fellow co-host Sherri Shepherd was now a gun owner.
Shepherd admitted she was: “Yes, I did, I bought a 9 millimeter gun,” explaining to her co-hosts that she bought it for self-protection and to keep her family safe:
During the quarantine I felt really helpless, Joy, we're talking about depression, I felt like Jeffrey would look at me like he was so scared and I’d get these alerts in my neighborhood app about it's going to be a march through the neighborhood and I started feeling like ‘how am I going to protect my son if something happens?’ and I went to -- I got some of my girlfriends who are actresses and we all went to a gun shop in California. There's only two black owned gun shops, I think it was like a Redstone Firearms, Geneva and Jonathan and we went and felt very empowered when I bought the gun. I took lessons, I took the test. I go to the range with my girlfriends like every other week and it just makes me feel like at least if something happens, I can protect my child.
Conservatives would applaud Shepherd taking the initiative to protect herself and her family from danger, and utilizing her gun ownership rights under the Second Amendment. But self-reliance and responsible gun ownership isn’t something that resonated with her anti-gun co-hosts.
Sunny Hostin jumped in to lecture Shepherd about all the horrible things that gun ownership supposedly leads to, like suicide and homicide. Hostin also blamed the rise in black gun owners to the looming threat of white supremacists:
I will tell you, I've had so many friends, my black girlfriends also get guns, especially during the pandemic, they wanted me to get a gun and as a former federal prosecutor and someone who has seen -- been to crime scenes and has seen a lot of gun violence in my career, you know, I know the statistics and that when you do have a gun in your home you are more likely to kill a loved one or a relative and the suicide rate goes up in your own home when you have a gun and I understand about the training, but I will say when I asked them why are you getting a gun, one said, ‘I googled civil war and 2020.’ One said, ‘it's the propensity of certain people to initiate violence when they don't get their way.’ And in the article that we were given, it said when you are being targeted you hear stories like Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland and have these incidents going on around the country and ‘want to know you have a chance of survival because some people are radical.’ We have to remember that the FBI has made it clear that the white supremacy is the most persistent and lethal threat to the country and I think that is why so many black women and black people in general are now arming themselves but I still believe that in this country, our readiness to sort of allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at will has led to violence and hatred becoming a really popular pastime.
Behar also tried to have it both ways. Admitting she was strongly for gun control, she complained that the NRA supported gun control in the1960s, “Because there was an effort to keep the guns out of the hands of African-Americans as racial tensions grew.” That’s not exactly the whole story. If Behar was referring to the Mulford Act passed by then-Governor of California Ronald Reagan in 1967, that was in response to members of the radical Black Panthers brandishing loaded guns on the steps of the California state capitol building to intimidate lawmakers.
Regardless, Behar warned, “More black people get guns you're going to see bigger gun control laws, watch!” So is she against or for gun control laws, exactly?
This isn’t the first time in recent months that the show has gone after gun owners and tied the rise in black gun ownership to white supremacy. Last July, they made the same argument and Hostin even claimed the Second Amendment was designed to protect slavery.
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Read the transcript below:
The View
10/12/21
JOY BEHAR: We recently talked in "Hot topics" about how more black women were becoming gun owners. You just became one of them, Sherri, didn't you?
SHERRI SHEPHERD: Yes, I did, I bought a 9 millimeter gun.
BEHAR: Why? [Crowd laughs]
SHEPHERD: I don't know why you are laughing but um. During the quarantine I felt really helpless, Joy, we're talking about depression, I felt like Jeffrey would look at me like he was so scared and I’d get these alerts in my neighborhood app about it's going to be a march through the neighborhood and I started feeling like ‘how am I going to protect my son if something happens?’ and I went to -- I got some of my girlfriends who are actresses and we all went to a gun shop in California. There's only two black owned gun shops, I think it was like a Redstone Firearms, Geneva and Jonathan and we went and felt very empowered when I bought the gun. I took lessons, I took the test. I go to the range with my girlfriends like every other week and it just makes me feel like at least if something happens, I can protect my child.
SUNNY HOSTIN: I will tell you, I've had so many friends, my black girlfriends also get guns, especially during the pandemic, they wanted me to get a gun and as a former federal prosecutor and someone who has seen -- been to crime scenes and has seen a lot of gun violence in my career, you know, I know the statistics and that when you do have a gun in your home you are more likely to kill a loved one or a relative and the suicide rate goes up in your own home when you have a gun and I understand about the training, but I will say when I asked them why are you getting a gun, one said, ‘I googled civil war and 2020.’ One said, ‘it's the propensity of certain people to initiate violence when they don't get their way.’ And in the article that we were given, it said when you are being targeted you hear stories like Breonna Taylor and Sandra Bland and have these incidents going on around the country and ‘want to know you have a chance of survival because some people are radical.’ We have to remember that the FBI has made it clear that the white supremacy is the most persistent and lethal threat to the country and I think that is why so many black women and black people in general are now arming themselves but I still believe that in this country, our readiness to sort of allow arms to be purchased at will and fired at will has led to violence and hatred becoming a really popular pastime.
JOY BEHAR: Let me give you a piece of information. [ Applause ] Okay, because I'm a big gun control person. Back in the '60s the NRA fought alongside the government for stricter gun regulations. Why? Because there was an effort to keep the guns out of the hands of African-Americans as racial tensions grew.
HOSTIN: Yeah, they wouldn't even give Dr. King a concealed carry permit. The same man that was killed by gun violence.
BEHAR: As more black people get guns you're going to see bigger gun control laws, watch.
SHEPHERD: I hear what you're saying. As a single woman, the helplessness I felt and when I looked at my son and he looked at me like, mom, I'm scared, I knew physically I'm not able to combat, take self-defense lessons.
