During the height of the Covid pandemic, author Roxane Gay bought a gun and took it to the range. She expected the place to be “full of White bros”; instead she saw a lot of Black people, predominantly Black women. This led her to reexamine many of her preconceived notions about gun ownership in America, culminating in a new essay called “Stand Your Ground: A Black Feminist Reckoning with America’s Gun Problem.”
In her essay, Gay grapples with the myth of safety and traces the gun’s place within America’s history and collective psyche as a potent symbol for protection and independence.
Amongst the vivid characters she introduces are her nine-pound dog Max, who loves and protects her more than most people in America, and her gun enthusiast brother whose sudden death at 43 is a testament that death can claim us in any number of ways, regardless of what we do to keep ourselves safe.
“A gun,” she writes, “is a tool.” One she would happily give up if it means making the world safer. But in the world we occupy now, she will keep heading to the gun range to sharpen her skills.
The following interview with Gay was conducted over email, and edited for clarity.
Frankie Huang: Your essay suggests that you decided to become a gun owner in large part because of a loss of faith in the government’s and society’s ability to protect you. Being armed makes you a much more dangerous person to mess with, but do you worry about how misogynoir-fueled aggression may ramp up to meet the gun-owning Black feminist?
Roxane Gay: I’ve never had faith in the government’s ability to protect me so there was no faith to be lost. Instead, the tone and specificity of the threats I was receiving intensified to the point where I felt like I needed to be more proactive in protecting myself and my family. I don’t worry about misogynoir-fueled aggression ramping up because, quite frankly, it feels like we’ve already reached that apex. If someone out there takes my owning a gun as a cue to try and test me, well, that’s certainly a choice.
Historically, the only time the gun lobby has tried to regulate guns is when Black people have been vocal about gun ownership. And even when Black people own guns legally, police treat us as criminals.
Roxane Gay
Looking at the numbers for gun ownership in America, it feels impossible for our country to ever be free of guns. Is the next safest thing a country full of guns — so that at no point can a mass shooter ever assume to approach an unarmed and vulnerable crowd? So that no cop could ever claim to be threatened by a Black person for being armed, since everyone is armed?
There is simply no world where everyone owning guns would lead to safety. That would be madness. We should live in a world where civilians don’t need to own guns, don’t feel like they need to own guns and don’t want to own guns. I have no idea how we change the American penchant for firearms, but we shall see what the future holds. And guns are not a deterrent to people who are hellbent on taking someone’s life. We’ve seen that time and again.
You talk about your nine-pound dog Max’s propensity for barking at potential intruders and how safe he made you feel. How would you compare Max to your gun?
Max is amazing and nothing makes me feel safer than this tiny dog with a very big heart. He always lets my wife and I know when we need to be alert, and it’s wonderful. I’ve never had a dog before so it has been quite the experience in the best possible ways.
Do you perceive a conflict of interest between the gun industry’s desire to expand their customer base and their often-racist politics? What do you think happens when there is a sizable non-White and progressive gun-owning population in this country?
There is already a sizable non-White and progressive gun owning population in this country. We just don’t feel the need to make it a central tenet of our identity.
How would the rise of the progressive people of color gun owners demographic affect policies and attitudes towards guns and gun ownership? Specifically, what effects might this have on the scourge of racist police violence?
Historically, the only time the gun lobby has tried to regulate guns is when Black people have been vocal about gun ownership. And even when Black people own guns legally, police treat us as criminals. The list is quite long of Black people legally owning guns and trying to protect themselves or merely sharing that they are a legal gun owner with a weapon on their person that they are nowhere near in reach of, who have then been killed by police. The better question is what, as a society, are we going to do about police violence and institutionalized racism? We aren’t safe from these forces, whether we own guns or not.
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