How the Firearms Industry Markets Guns to Asian American

By Violence Policy Center

   Since the mid-1960s, self-defense has been the foundational argument used by the gun industry to sell firearms, primarily handguns, in the United States. In this effort, gunmakers have been aided by the gun lobby, most notably the National Rifle Association of America (NRA). Firearms are promoted as risk-free tools necessary for the defense of self and family from myriad threats, most frequently an attack by a stranger. Never acknowledged is the demonstrable fact that guns are rarely used to kill criminals or stop crimes, and that most homicides occur between people who know one another. Also missing from this false and simplistic narrative is the reality of the trauma, legal and financial risk, and long-term emotional repercussions that can come with the act of taking another human life. Historically, the primary demographic targeted by the gun industry has been white males. This is now changing as the result of the fact that this traditional customer base is aging while gunmakers, to paraphrase a tobacco industry term, have failed to recruit a sufficient number of ‘replacement shooters’ to fill their thinning ranks. As a result, household and individual gun ownership over the past few decades in the United States have declined significantly and remain relatively stagnant.3 While children and women have been the default targets of the industry in the wake of stagnation of the white male market, there has also been a growing campaign to market guns to minority groups in America, primarily for self-defense. Latino and Black    Americans have been the primary focus of these efforts. This has begun to shift in the wake of high-profile racist attacks on members of the Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, including a mass shooting in Atlanta, Georgia, during the COVID-19 pandemic. As an April 2021 Pew Research survey found, “Amid widespread reports of discrimination and violence against Asian Americans during the coronavirus outbreak, 32% percent of Asian adults say they have feared someone might threaten or physically attack them – a greater share than other racial or ethnic groups. The vast majority of Asian adults (81%) also say violence against them is increasing, far surpassing the share of all U.S. adults (56%) who say the same....”4Seeing an opportunity to exploit the fear spurred by these horrific attacks, the firearms industry has moved swiftly to expand its efforts targeting the AAPI community

Washington DC: Violence  Policy Center, 2021.26p.