Firearms of all kinds were on display at the Showmasters Gun Show at the Richmond Raceway Complex last weekend. Attendees, including 26-year-old Pedro from Richmond who chose not to share his last name, carried their unloaded weapons through the bustling expo, highlighting a growing trend of African Americans embracing gun ownership.

“I’m hoping it’s one place where we all get united,” said Annette Elliott of Showmasters.

From 2015 to 2021, the percentage of new gun owners who identified as Black or African American jumped from 8% to 20%, the American Journal of Preventive Medicine reported. About 14.4% of the U.S. population “self-identified as Black” in 2022, according to Pew Research Center.

The crowd at the Richmond Raceway Complex last weekend was multiracial and multigenerational.

Folks hovered over tables overflowing with vintage rifles and semiautomatics, mostly the latter.

While a lot of Black folks are becoming gun owners, it’s impossible to ignore that a lot of African Americans have died from gun violence. The Centers for Disease Control said firearm homicide rates are highest among teens and young adults,

“Black or African American persons,” Indigenous folk, and Hispanics/Latinos. The CDC reported that in 2021, “among males, Black or African American males had the highest age-adjusted rate of firearm-related homicide (52.9 deaths per 100,000 standard population).”

Despite the grim statistics, some gun owners, like Jahmal Justin Exavier Patterson, 28, from Prince George County, believe the issue lies with people, not firearms.

“I believe that guns aren’t bad. It’s the choices of the people that are bad,” Patterson said. “I just believe in the [Second] Amendment right. I believe in protecting ourselves.”

In more than a dozen conversations with attendees about gun ownership, the words “protect” or “protection” came up often. 

Bryan Watson, a gun vendor from Ivor, Va., was kitted out in a tactical vest, with “Security” printed on the back and strapped with multiple firearms and magazines.

“I’m here today, one, selling firearms that I custom build and paint myself; and just to support the Second Amendment itself. “Watson told the Free Press. “The Second Amendment is the right to protect myself and preserve my property and the people that I love, so that’s what it means to me.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Avery Young, a 22-year-old manning a table for Hollow Point Coating, a Black-owned company, shared his perspective. “I have plenty of guns,” he said, listing his Glock 27, Glock 17, a 10/22 rifle he inherited, and an AR-15, the military-style weapon at the center of the assault weapon-ban debates.

“I need the AR-15 to protect myself, to protect myself from anything that may want to harm me or my family, anybody that I care about.

“Gun control is BS,” Young said, but he allowed that there should be some limits placed on gun ownership. “Violent felons should not be able to own firearms.”

Others at the show shared the idea of personal accountability, such as Young’s boss, Andrew Holloway. “I think gun ownership is a responsibility,” Holloway, told the Free Press. “If you do need to protect your family, if you do need to go back to hunter-gather mode, you need to understand how to use a firearm.”

There was some talk—and display—of politics.

Trump banners hung in the back of the exhibition hall. One white man in his 40s wearing a camo cap who didn’t want to be quoted but talked a lot anyway about Trump and “Kamala,” emphasizing the second syllable. The elder he was sitting with spoke of “concentration camps” the government is allegedly setting up in all 50 states.

Margaret Robinson, a retired beauty salon owner from Emporia, was there with a friend who was considering a gun purchase. Robinson owns a gun “for protection” and says guns “should be out of [the] hands of people with mental illnesses,” children and people with domestic violence convictions.

She also wanted to address an issue she felt was crucial in the context of the gun show: the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

“That was the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said. “That’s our Capitol. To me, it was the worst thing that could happen because it undermines our sense of security. Our government is supposed to protect us.”