{"id":67043,"date":"2021-04-20T15:52:14","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T20:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=67043"},"modified":"2021-04-20T15:52:14","modified_gmt":"2021-04-20T20:52:14","slug":"67043","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=67043","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Asian Americans Create Gun Group as Ownership, Hate Crimes Rise.<\/a><\/p>\n

A new gun group hoping to educate Asian Americans about gun rights and gun safety in response to rising hate crimes launched on Monday.<\/p>\n

Asian American and Pacific Islander Gun Owners<\/a>\u00a0(AAPIGO) aims to provide training and representation to a demographic often overlooked in the conversation on guns. They have scheduled their first\u00a0meet-and-greet range day<\/a>\u00a0for May 2 in Livermore, Calif. And they have already signed up 25 people for an informational course on how to apply for a California gun-carry permit followed by a group application drive designed to bring awareness to the rising threat of hate crimes against Asian Americans.<\/p>\n

Racist attacks on Asians surged in 2020, with\u00a0one report<\/a>\u00a0putting the figure at nearly 3,800 incidents and the Los Angeles Police Department reporting the rate of hate crimes against Asians more than doubling. Simultaneously, alongside other Americans, Asians began buying more guns. A\u00a0gun dealer survey<\/a>\u00a0conducted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation found the number of Asian customers jumping 46 percent in the first half of 2020.<\/p>\n

Now, AAPIGO wants to train those new Asian gun owners and equip them to protect themselves against racist attacks.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Patrick Lopez and Scott Kane founded the group after meeting on Reddit. The two men had been looking for ways to encourage the influx of new Asian-American gun owners to get training and learn about their Second Amendment rights.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn early March, there was a lot of news about the shooting in Atlanta and new gun owners, lots of new gun purchases,\u201d Lopez, an Asian American man who lives in California and works in the tech industry, told\u00a0The Reload<\/em>. \u201cAnd I\u2019m seeing that in action, people bringing their brand new guns, and it just kind of hit me like \u2018it would be nice if there were a place where people of Asian descent can just get good information.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Kane said the events that led to him joining with Lopez to create AAPIGO began over a year ago. Kane, who is white, was walking with his wife and daughter, who are of Chinese descent, when a group of men began shouting racist slurs at them.<\/p>\n

\u201cA couple of guys in a pickup truck were driving down the street and yelled at me, my wife, and daughter \u2018hey, go back to China, Kung flu,\u2019 and stuff like that,\u201d he told\u00a0The Reload<\/em>.<\/p>\n

It was then, at the age of 38, he decided to buy his first gun. \u201cI mean, that was kind of like the initial spark, but over the course of the year, things just kind of started getting worse and worse,\u201d Kane said.<\/p>\n

He immediately ran into problems buying his gun during California\u2019s gun-store shutdowns, and a process that should have taken him 10 days dragged out to two months. That motivated him to\u00a0get involved in gun-rights advocacy<\/a>. And the continued attacks suffered by his Asian-American friends and family led him to the same conclusion as Lopez: There is a real need for an Asian-American gun group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat attracted me to this approach is that we have the same mindset of let\u2019s emphasize education first and helping folks in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community learn about their rights and what they have at their disposal to make some informed decisions when it comes to purchasing a firearm and if that\u2019s even right for them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Chris Cheng, an Asian-American gun-rights activist who\u00a0testified before Congress<\/a>\u00a0on gun rights in March, told\u00a0The Reload<\/em>\u00a0an Asian group would fill a hole in current efforts by the gun-rights movement and the firearms industry to reach new demographics. He said many Asians come from countries where guns are negatively stigmatized as being tools of oppressive military and police regimes. That, combined with language and cultural barriers, can make it especially hard to get Asian Americans interested in gun ownership, according to Cheng. But not impossible.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we look at the success of outreach programs for women, we have a template and a blueprint for how this can be successful,\u201d he said. \u201cNow, the challenge is taking that and applying it to Asian Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Asian Americans have often been taught not to draw negative attention to themselves, even when faced with racist violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would venture to say all Asian Americans have experienced racism at some point in their lives,\u201d Cheng said. \u201cI definitely have, and you\u2019re genuinely encouraged that if you are experiencing racism, Asians are often encouraged to just be quiet about it. Don\u2019t report it to the authorities because you either can\u2019t trust them, or they\u2019re not going to do anything about it. So, the best course of action is often to just put your head down, take the punches on the chin, and just focus on doing good work.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the last year has been a \u201cgame changer\u201d in the community, Cheng said. The onslaught of racist violence specifically targeting elderly Asian Americans has begun to change how the community views speaking out and even being armed. He pointed to the February\u00a0murder of 84-year-old Thai immigrant Vichar Ratanapakdee<\/a>\u00a0in San Francisco as a particularly brutal example that shocked him and his community.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing increased attacks on the Asian-American community. We\u2019re seeing calls for defunding the police. We\u2019re seeing riots and social unrest. We\u2019re seeing more anti-Asian language coming from politicians,\u201d Cheng said. \u201cIf we can\u2019t rely on society and law enforcement to protect us, then, naturally, Asian Americans are starting to wake up to this notion that I may be that first-generation gun owner for my Asian-American family because that is going to be the only way that I\u2019m going to be able to protect myself and my family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kane said he hopes AAPIGO will ultimately grow into an organization that can help bring Asians more completely into the fold of American gun ownership. He said he wants to help build a world where his 7-year-old daughter no longer has to be subjected to people yelling slurs at her while they drive down the street. And one where she will be trained and able to defend herself if necessary.<\/p>\n

If his daughter is going to \u201cgrow up in a world where racism is as much a problem,\u201d Kane said he wants her to be \u201cable to exercise her right to be able to defend herself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lopez said he and Kane have already recruited one member who is eager to help build AAPIGO, and they hope more people will rally to their side as they ramp up events.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re super excited about what we can do, and we really are just trying to push as hard as we can with the limited resources we have to try to make this happen,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, it\u2019s just three guys. We welcome anybody and everybody to help us build this out. Help us educate as many Asian American and Pacific Islander gun owners that we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Asian Americans Create Gun Group as Ownership, Hate Crimes Rise. A new gun group hoping to educate Asian Americans about gun rights and gun safety in response to rising hate crimes launched on Monday. Asian American and Pacific Islander Gun Owners\u00a0(AAPIGO) aims to provide training and representation to a demographic often overlooked in the conversation … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rkba","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67043"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67044,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67043\/revisions\/67044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}