Trends point to an interesting change in American gun ownership.

In keeping with reports from NYMag’s The Cut, Black women are the fastest-growing group of gun owners within the country. The explanation behind it’s different than you prototypical gun owner is for self-defense.

“It makes me feel safer,” Onnie Brown, 43, of Phoenix, Arizona, told The Cut.

The rise in gun ownership is complicated so as to add into hard numbers, but Black women do make up the vast majority of the 40,000 members of the National African American Gun Association.

Last September, The Philadelphia Tribune took their very own have a look at the problem by digging into the numbers. Gun sales amongst Black men and ladies increased by 58 percent in the primary six months of 2020, in line with data compiled by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.

The Tribune noted that crime is the prime mover of this growing trend of their piece, also fueled by the financial and emotional stress of the coronavirus. Also, the rising death toll when police brutality and violent white supremacists are constant concerns, interested gun owners are taking stock of measures to guard themselves and others.

“We’ve seen such a rise in white nationalist violence,” added Webster, who can also be director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy.

A nationally representative survey conducted by a public health researcher at Harvard University also cited that Black women make up a minority of total gun ownership.

Ten percent of all gun owners were Black, and 37 percent were women, in line with The Cut. But of the survey’s respondents who said they purchased a firearm for the primary time between Jan. 2019 and Apr. 2021, 21 percent were Black and 48 percent were women.