The police killing of Amir Locke seconds after he was awoken by a SWAT team in Minneapolis is yet another example of how Black Americans who legally own guns end up dead because of their race in such high-risk situations, his family’s attorneys say.
It’s been long understood by experts that American gun rights cannot be separated from race, and they say the country’s history of criminalizing Blackness creates implicit biases against African Americans who are exercising their Second Amendment rights.
“Rights only matter if those around you, especially those who have power around you, recognize you as having those rights,” said Jennifer Carlson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona who examines gun politics, policing and its intersection with race, gender and violence.
Locke, 22, was a legal gun owner with no criminal record, according to his family. He died Feb. 2 after several Minneapolis officers entered an apartment on a “no-knock” raid while executing a search for evidence in a homicide investigation. Body camera video shows he was shot less than 10 seconds after the SWAT team quietly opened the door with a key and then loudly began shouting commands.
LATEST NEWS:In raid that killed Amir Locke, Minneapolis police insisted on ‘no-knock’ search warrant
Locke was wrapped in a blanket and holding a gun, with his finger off the trigger, when police startled him awake.
“Any gun owner looks at this case and has to know that they could have been Amir Locke,” said family attorney Jeff Storms. “But the fact that it’s repeatedly Black Americans who end up in that situation, it makes us wonder, why isn’t it any American?”
While Minneapolis’ interim police chief said the officer had to make a split-second decision after seeing the gun, advocates for Locke and his family attorneys say the search was problematic from the start because no-knock warrants are widely considered dangerous and in some cities disproportionately target Black residents.
Meanwhile as Black gun ownership increases dramatically, experts say there’s more work to be done to dismantle the anti-Black racism that can lead to fatal confrontations.
NO-KNOCK WARRANTS:A growing legacy of controversy, revised laws, tragic deaths
‘Race is an issue in this country’: Implicit bias can have deadly consequences
When people must make split-second decisions under pressure, their brains can make pertinent cognitive shortcuts, Carlson said.
Implicit bias becomes “particularly consequential” in cases involving Black Americans and police because throughout American history, criminality has been linked with Black people, she said.
Studies have found that people also have “weapons bias,” linking Black faces and guns much more quickly than white faces with guns, she said. In cases where the object is ambiguous and unclear, participants were more likely to see a gun that wasn’t there if they saw an associated Black face.
“The weapons bias is one of the most profound illustrations of how race, gun rights and the politics of life and death intersect and unfold in these kinds of situations,” Carlson said.
Chuck Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a nonprofit police research and policy organization, said it’s the presence of a gun that creates a problem in quickly unfolding situations.
“Race is an issue in this country,” Wexler said. “But when you put guns into these situations, whether this person’s Black or white, it’s hard to distinguish if they have it legally or illegally at that moment. That’s the problem.”
While there is a denial of Second Amendment rights because of race, cases like Locke’s aren’t the best examples, said Robert J. Cottrol, a legal historian at George Washington University Law School.
TEEN ARRESTED:Locke’s cousin charged in homicide investigation that led to Minneapolis police killing
“There’s a danger in generalizing from a few or atypical cases,” Cottrol said, noting references to Breonna Taylor, Philando Castile and now Locke. “If you want to look at the question of race and Second Amendment rights, these are not the cases to look.”
But Carlson said these cases are “the tragic culmination of dynamics that have already been well documented and researched by scholars.”
“The problem is when you have an encounter like what happened with Amir Locke … you have this right to self-defense that’s treated as sacred by the conservative right in the country,” Carlson said. “But instead … (officers) enter that room already sort of primed to think of what they’re doing with this warrior mentality that’s rife throughout policing. Then they see a Black man with a gun.”
Gun legislation, Second Amendment designed to disarm Black Americans
The relationship between race and the Second Amendment stretches back to the 17th century, according to Carol Anderson, professor and chair of African American studies at Emory University.
During the Constitutional Convention, the Second Amendment was crafted as a “bribe” to slave owners like Patrick Henry and George Mason in Virginia who expressed concern to James Madison that the federal government would not protect them against slave revolts, she said.
The Second Amendment, along with the three-fifths compromise, a promise to expand the Atlantic slave trade by 20 years and the fugitive slave clause, ensured Southern states would ratify the Constitution.
“It is predicated on anti-Blackness, predicated on the fear of Black people, predicated on defining Black people as criminals,” said Anderson, author of “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America.”
‘DIDN’T EVEN GIVE HIM A CHANCE’:Minneapolis police ‘executed’ Amir Locke during no-knock raid, family says
“They basically held the reality of the U.S. hostage in order to maintain slavery for slaveholders.”
Anderson said restricting Black people’s access to weapons continued to be a legislative priority even after slavery ended and when African Americans gained full rights as citizens.
In 1967, then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed into law the “Mulford Act,” a bill meant to prohibit the public carrying of loaded firearms. It was crafted with the intention of disarming members of the Black Panther Party who had been conducting armed patrols of Oakland neighborhoods to do copwatching and who had showed up at the California statehouse bearing arms to protest the bill. The NRA supported the bill.
As states expanded protections for gun owners, those legal doctrines were applied unevenly. Anderson cited a U.S. Civil Rights Commission Report, which found that white people who killed Black people and used stand your ground laws as a defense were 10 times more likely to be ruled justified than if the shooter was Black and the victim was white.
David Yamane, a professor of sociology at Wake Forest University who has been studying American gun culture for the past decade, noted that as concealed carry weapons have become more normalized in American society, that struggle has also played out in terms of who is or isn’t granted a permit.
White people were up to twice as more likely to apply for a concealed handgun license than Black people, according to a 2017 study from the University of Texas at Austin that analyzed data from Florida, Indiana, Massachusetts, Texas and Utah.
The study also found significant racial disparities in application outcomes – Black people were 3.3 to 5.5 times more likely to be denied a license than a white applicant.
In a current case before the U.S. Supreme Court, the Black Attorneys of Legal Aid argued that New York’s licensing regime “renders the Second Amendment a legal fiction” and that “virtually all our clients whom New York prosecutes for exercising their Second Amendment right are Black or Hispanic. And that is no accident.
“New York enacted its firearm licensing requirements to criminalize gun ownership by racial and ethnic minorities. That remains the effect of its enforcement by police and prosecutors today,” the group argued.
The ‘anti-Blackness’ in America is driving up Black gun ownership
Americans are purchasing more firearms than ever, and gun sales to Black consumers increased 58% last year, the most among any demographic measured, according to a survey from the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Philip Smith-Soboyede, president of the National African American Gun Association, believes the surge in gun ownership and membership of his organization is driven by three factors: The Black community experiencing a “maturation process” that’s changing negative perceptions of guns, a desire for protection amid the country’s racial tension, and concern about the unrest and uncertainty created by the pandemic.
Smith questioned the tactics used in the SWAT raid that lead to Locke’s death and said the community needs to push law enforcement to change the way it interacts with Black citizens, adding that many NAAGA members are law enforcement or military.
‘THE SECOND AMENDMENT SHOULD BE EQUAL’:The National African American Gun Association group continues to grow
He’s had painful discussions with members of his organization about Black men and women being killed by “knee-jerk reactions of the law enforcement toward our community.”
But Smith said giving up their weapons isn’t the solution. “If we can open carry legally in your state, Black people should have the right to do that,” he said.
When asked how this increase in Black gun ownership could affect interactions with the police going forward, Anderson’s response was grim.
“We’re in trouble,” she said. “The anti-Blackness is so deep and so profound and so real that until we dismantle it, Black folks without weapons are threat. Black folks with weapons are an exponential threat.”
Contact Breaking News Reporter N’dea Yancey-Bragg at nyanceybra@gannett.com or follow her on Twitter @NdeaYanceyBragg
Tami Abdollah is a USA TODAY national correspondent covering inequities in the criminal justice system. Send tips via direct message @latams or email tami(at)usatoday.com