That includes Brandon Daurham, the co-executive director of the violence prevention group Stick Talk, who believes that both increasingly restrictive requirements to possess a firearm and stiffer sentences for possessing a gun without a FOID card or carry permit are red herrings when it comes to reducing violence. And based on new reporting from the Hyde Park Herald, Daurham isn't alone in thinking the state's gun laws are doing more harm than good. 

The paper covered a recent event held by Stick Talk, along with another group that, while not primarily focused on 2A issues, still finds fault with the state's gun control laws. 

Indeed, a recent report by the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, around which the event at Call and Response was centered, found that even as Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office cracked down severely on illicit gun possession over the past 10 years by making thousands more arrests and securing yearslong prison sentences, there was no corresponding pattern of a drop in gun homicides or nonfatal shootings. 

Naomi Johnson, the co-executive director of Chicago Appleseed, explained the reason for convening the event about “The War on Guns” with Stick Talk was to present their research to the people most likely to be affected by these policies.

“An important thing we try to do at Appleseed,” she said, “is to figure out what's going on and share it with community members so they can also have an understanding of what's going on and what to expect if they're ever impacted by the criminal legal system.” 

The report, which Johnson co-authored with Austin Segal, Maya Simkin, Stephanie Agnew, Kareem Butler and Briana Payton, also details how “significant barriers to legal firearm ownership disproportionately impact young, Black Chicagoans,” like those in attendance at the event.

The Appleseed activists and violence-prevention advocates like Daurham say the War on Drugs has largely morphed into a War on Guns, and the crackdown is having a disproportionate impact on minority communities. 

According to reporting by the nonpartisan news outlet the Marshall Project, about 30 times as many Black men were arrested for illegal gun possession as white men in Chicago between 2010 and 2022. A 2017 survey by the Pew Research Center found that white men own guns at about twice the rate of nonwhite men.

For ucker, the emerging “War on Guns” is thus a racialized one in which only select demographic groups of gun owners are criminalized for gun possession, akin to the way the “War on Drugs” led to the disproportionate incarceration of Black and brown men even though illicit drug use is fairly constant across Black, Latino and white Americans. 

From his work in Illinois prisons, ucker witnessed firsthand how the “War on Guns” has ramped up in the years since some illicit drugs, such as marijuana, were decriminalized. 

“Fifteen years ago, when I was going inside, it would be a very small percentage of people inside for guns,” he said. “Now, ninety-nine percent of the people that we see are in there for gun possession.”

Appleseed’s report shows that from 2019 to 2023, about 3,000 more people were sent to prison for gun felonies than drug ones and that in a large majority of those felonies convictions no bullet was fired.

Chicago doesn't make it easy for residents to exercise their 2A rights. There are no gun shops or ranges within the city limits, so folks who want to legally acquire or carry a firearm are forced to travel to the suburbs for their mandated training and to purchase a gun. And unlike the War on Drugs, which has shifted at least somewhat to a harm reduction approach, the War on Guns is still very much centered around an abstinence-based ideology. Gun control activists and their political allies aren't interested in promoting safe and responsible gun ownership or making it easy to learn about real gun safety from firearm instructors at a range. They see gun ownership itself as a problem to be solved, and that includes locking up anyone who possesses a gun without the required state-issued permission slip. 

According to Johnson and the report’s other authors, more aggressive policing and incarceration will do little to reassure people who carry guns out of fear and for protection. Thus, they conclude that, “it is essential that communities consider the merits of a harm reduction approach to gun possession.” 

“This will require community members to confront the negative stereotypes and commonly accepted framing that people who possess guns are morally corrupt,” they write, “and embrace that they are responding rationally to the pressures of their environment and are worthy of support."

Gun owners and Second Amendment advocates might not immediately see left-leaning groups like Chicago Appleseed as natural allies, but I believe there's a lot of common ground to be found, and I'd love to see 2A organizations lend their support to violence prevention advocates who agree that more gun control isn't the answer. The gun control lobby has done extensive outreach to community violence prevention groups over the past few years, including funneling scads of cash their way through the now-shuttered White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. We have an excellent opportunity now to amplify those voices and efforts that are aimed at making our cities safer while also making it easier to lawfully keep and bear arms.