The Economist - USA (2022-01-22)

The Economist January 22nd 2022 United States 21

Gun-owners

Annette gets

her guns

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icturea gunslingerandAnnetteEv ansprobablydoesnotspringtomind. SheisChineseAmerican,livesinthesub urbsofPhiladelphiaandidentifiesherself associallyliberal—notthearchetypalcon servative,ruralwhiteman.Yetsheowns overadozenrifles,pistolsandshotguns (“one for everyoccasion, like purses or shoes”)andteachesselfdefencecourses towomen.Herraceandgenderputherat risk,shesays.“Itmaybea lowchancethat I’llrunintosomeonewhowillkillme,but withouta gun,I’lldie.” More gunowners, especially new ones, look like Ms Evans. Of the 7.5m Americans who bought firearms for the first time be tween January 2019 and April 2021—as gun buying surged nationwide—half were fe male, a fifth black and a fifth Hispanic, ac cording to a recent study by Matthew Mill er of Northeastern University and his co authors. The share of black adults who joined the gunowning ranks, 5.3%, was more than twice that of white adults. That is new: in a previous survey, in 2015, new buyers skewed white and male, though they were more politically liberal than longstanding ones. Overall, today’s gun owners are still largely white (73%) and male (63%). But they are diversifying. Gun culture has broadened its appeal. Decades ago most people bought guns for hunting and recreational shooting. Now they mostly do so for selfdefence, which is a universal concern. People who feel vul nerable to crime or hold less faith in the police are more likely to arm themselves. Rising murder rates in 2020 and 2021 heightened those anxieties (blacks are the likeliest victims). Membership of the Na tional African American Gun Association grew in 2020 by more than 25%, to 40,000. Blacks have a long history of owning guns: Harriet Tubman toted them, Martin Luther King kept them at home. But this tradition was long “surreptitious”, says Aqil Qadir, a thirdgeneration shooter who runs a fire armstraining centre in Tennessee. Many of the newer gunowners see fire arms as an equaliser—a remedy for the vul nerability they feel. The Pink Pistols, an lgbtgroup, proclaims “armed queers don’t get bashed”. “God made man and woman, but Sam Colt made them equal,” goes a markswoman’s maxim. Women’s gunow nership has always trailed that among men: women tended to shoot because men in the family did. But Robyn Sandoval, boss

of A Girl anda Gun,a shootinggroup, increasinglyseeswomenbuyinggunson theirowninitiative:a thirdofnewjoiners toherorganisationin 2021 saidtheywere theonlyshooterintheirfamily. Thebroadeningtentisgoodformanu facturers andbad forguncontrol advo cates.Ownersaremorepoliticallyactive aroundgunissuesthannonowners.Al readyitmayhavehadaneﬀect.According topollingbyGallup,in 2021 supportfor stricter lawsdropped by ﬁvepercentage points,toitslowestinsevenyears.n

LOS ANGELES Concerns over safety lead more women and minorities to arm themselves

Armsandthewoman

Flagsandfreespeech

Pole dance

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henbostonopeneditsnewcityhall in 1969, the building’s Brutalist style prompted both cheers and jeers. On Janu ary 18th another dispute involving the site landed at America’s Supreme Court. Shur tleff v City of Boston asks whether Boston infringed an organisation’s freedom of speech when a bureaucrat refused to fly its flag depicting a cross. A lopsided majority of the justices seems to think the city vio lated the First Amendment. The plaza in front of Boston’s city hall is typically graced by flags of the United States, Massachusetts and Boston. But since 2005 the city has occasionally swapped its flag for that of a foreign coun try to mark anniversaries or honour visi tors. It has also hoisted flags celebrating gay pride, Malcolm X and the battle of Bun ker Hill. But in 2017 it turned down a re quest from Camp Constitution, a group

dedicated to the appreciation of America’s “JudeoChristian moral heritage”, to raise what it called a “Christian flag”. It was the first time Gregory Rooney, the commissioner in charge, had rejected an application. Boston had a duty to keep gov ernment separate from church, he rea soned. Other flags may have included reli gious symbols—such as Portugal’s, with its representations of Christ’s wounds—but no group had described its flag in religious terms when seeking airtime. Camp Constitution sued and lost in two lower courts. The First Amendment “re stricts government regulation of private speech in governmentdesignated public forums”, the First Circuit Court of Appeals wrote, but “such restrictions do not apply to government speech”. Since Boston owned and managed the flagpoles, any messages from the pennants were, the judges reasoned, those of the city itself. This premise did not get a friendly re ception among the Supreme Court justices. They seemed to agree with the flagraisers that, in light of “284 flagraising approvals, no denials, and usually no review” over a 12year span, Boston had created a public forum. Balking only when the city disco vered a religious point of view behind Camp Constitution’s flag is “viewpoint dis crimination”, the group’s lawyer argued— anathema to the freedom of speech. None of the six conservative justices ac cepted Boston’s defence that the flagpole has served as a megaphone for the city’s point of view. “Does the mayor of Boston really approve of the Montreal Cana diens?”, Chief Justice John Roberts asked, referring to a week in 2014 when Boston flew the rival hockey team’s flag. Well, that was the mayor honouring a bet, Boston’s lawyer explained; if the Boston Bruins had beaten the Canadiens, the Bruins’ flag would have flown over Montreal. Boston’s lawyer faced critical questions from the liberal justices, too. It is under standable why Mr Rooney thought flying the Christian flag would fall foul of the sep aration of church and state, Justice Elena Kagan said, but his decision hinged on a misunderstanding. A permanent cross on city hall might be forbidden, but “in the context of a system where flags go up, flags go down, different people have different kinds of flags”, there’s no real worry. With prospects of prevailing in Shurtleff close to nil when the court rules in the spring, cities may yet have a way to turn away swastika flags while accepting oth ers. If the city exercised more control over each application and brought an official to every flagraising, Justice Amy Coney Bar rett explained, it would be kosher for Bos ton to say it is “happy to celebrate and com municate pride in Juneteenth”,for exam ple, but decline “to participatein a flag raising for the Proud Boys”.n

N EW YORK The Supreme Court looks askance at Boston’s refusal to fly a Christian flag

The Economist - USA (2022-01-22)

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