Latinos not in love with guns

The NRA isn’t likely to find much sympathy among Latinos as it moves ahead with its campaign against gun control. Most Latinos aren’t part of the love affair with guns in this country, a recently released Gallup poll shows.

We are less likely than any other group to own guns and more likely to support regulations.  Our low rates of gun ownership, 18 percent, is considered “below average” by the researchers in a country where 33 percent of whites and 22 percent of African Americans own guns. Overall, one third of Americans own guns and there is at least one firearm in half of America’s households.

The breakdown of the data by categories is eye-popping: 45 percent of all males in this country own guns (versus 15 percent of women.)  Who is more likely to own guns? That would be older, southern, married, white men. In every single one of those boxes the numbers fluctuate anywhere from 50 percent to 70 percent. About half of them identify themselves as Protestant Christians.

Latinos are also different when it comes to their attitudes toward regulations. A study last year by the Pew Research Center found that 29 percent of Latinos think it is more important to protect individual gun owners’ rights than to regulate weapons. By contrast, 59 percent of whites and 35 percent of blacks believe that individual gun ownership rights are more important.

No doubt that the high rate of gun ownership in this country will make the discussion over regulations a very thorny one. Any changes on the status quo would have a direct impact in tens of millions of Americans, regardless of where they stand on the issue. Yet it needs to happen. We can no longer ignore it.  Every society needs to periodically reassess its rules, written and unwritten, and see if they conform to their reality and are in step with who and what it wants to be.

Now, the discussion can hardly be insulated from partisan politics. The Gallup research shows that Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to own guns. Both camps have already drawn the land in the sand between them. Yet, politicians aside, we have to decide as the citizens of this country whether new restrictions and checks are necessary to curve down gun violence or if, for the sake of a philosophical stance, we do little or nothing in order to keep the government away and purported liberties intact.