Examining Black Gun Owners' Legal Consciousness Across Distinct Regulatory Contexts: Evidence from FL and NJ

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Abstract

This qualitative study examines how Black firearm owners understand and navigate gun laws across two contrasting regulatory environments. Drawing on 54 in-depth interviews with Black gun owners in gun-permissive Florida and gun-restrictive New Jersey, we identify divergent patterns in legal consciousness associated with distinct forms of state contact. We situate this study within the post-2020 surge in Black firearm ownership, itself a response to heightened visibility of police violence and social upheaval, highlighting the contradictions Black gun owners face navigating a legal system that formally grants their right to bear arms while in practice criminalizing and blocking it.
In Florida, despite permitless carry laws, Black gun owners split between those who preemptively disclose concealed carry permits during traffic stops to signal lawfulness and those who maintain silence, invoking the "no duty to inform" law to avoid escalation. Both strategies reflect attempts to strategically wield legal mechanisms against racialized threat assessments by police.
In New Jersey, participants' experiences with the bureaucratic process of obtaining firearm purchasing permits, administered by local law enforcement, shape their attitudes toward gun policy broadly. Those perceiving racial bias in permit processing express skepticism toward all firearm regulations, characterizing them as tools to disarm and criminalize Black communities. Those experiencing procedural fairness support restrictions despite acknowledging burdensome barriers to ownership.
These findings illuminate how firearm laws function as contemporary instruments of racial order amid increasing Black gun ownership, producing new avenues for the surveillance, discipline, and criminalization of Black communities and reifying criminal legal systems that perpetuate racial hierarchy. Black firearm owners' legal consciousness, shaped by perceptions of and responses to racialized enforcement, ultimately draws them further into state control. The paper concludes with policy implications for firearm harm reduction in Black communities, grounded in approaches that shrink the reach of the carceral state.

Authors

• Kimberly Cecilia Burke, Rutgers University

• Jennifer Paruk, Rutgers University, NJ Gun Violence Research Center