“It’s one of those adapt and adjust situations in today’s culture,” Weather said. His son nodded.
A Gallup poll found that the number of adults who think having a gun makes their homes safer rose from 42% to 64% between 1993 and 2023. The National Rifle Association was founded in 1871 by two Civil War veterans who were appalled by the poor shooting skills of a typical military recruit. In 1873, they began matches to improve marksmanship skills. In the 1930s, its leadership lobbied for gun control legislation. It was not until the 1970s that the NRA morphed into the staunchly pro-Second Amendment agenda, according to the 2020 study.
Once a year, the Virginia Kekoas join other gun-rights advocates on Lobby Day at the state Capitol to demonstrate the right to open-carry guns. The militia derives its name from a Hawaiian word meaning “warrior;” the group was once known as the Virginian Knights but changed it not wanting to be associated with the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Beckner doesn’t mind the term “militia,” even though militias no longer exist as government-supported units. He believes the word fits because the Kekoas are ready to help the government if needed in an emergency.
In the last 10 to 15 years, researchers like Spitzer have observed an uptick in “what the gun industry calls the political sale of guns” with manufacturers marketing firearms as political products. Sales spiked after Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and 2012, out of fear that the Democrats would create new gun-buying restrictions. Donald Trump extolled himself as a gun person, and sales went relatively flat after he became president in 2016. According to Spitzer, the gun industry termed a phrase after the election: “The Trump Slump.”
But, the professor added, the proliferation of guns increases the chances of them being used in crime.
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‘Dripping with fear’
Portsmouth Police Chief Stephen Jenkins has no problem with citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights. But firearms carry another appeal.
“We have a culture that glorifies the ownership and or use of guns,” he said, “and that is more so along the criminal aspect.”
The most commonly prosecuted charge in Norfolk in 2020 was possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to a study by the Virginia Bar Association. Jenkins said Portsmouth has one of the highest rates of firearm theft per capita in the state.
“My problem surrounding guns is I have a hard time believing that our forefathers believed weapons of war should be on our everyday streets.”
City police, Jenkins said, monitor social media and examine videos showing young people showing off, almost worshipping, their firearms. To exemplify just how common guns are in Portsmouth, he pointed to a recent incident. On May 28, Jenkins — while in uniform — was talking to a citizen in front of a Food Lion parking lot when a man in the lot began firing a gun into the air. Jenkins drew his sidearm and quelled the situation, he said. The person was arrested on numerous charges, many related to firearms, according to the Portsmouth clerk of courts.
Troy Ketchmore knows the dangers of guns within a culture of fear.
In 1995, he and two of his friends were carrying when he got into an argument with another man. Gunfire was exchanged, and the man was killed. Ketchmore was sentenced to prison for first-degree murder.
“If you see a kid packing,” he said, “they are dripping with fear.”
“The gun is my security to come back home tonight,” he said, thinking back on his youth. “It was a thing of, you’d rather get caught with it than without it.”
After serving 26 years, Ketchmore was paroled in 2021. Now 52, he helps run his family’s nonprofit, Ketchmore Kids, which runs classes to help kids who have gotten in trouble sometimes related to guns. He visits the Newport News Juvenile Detention center every other week and tries to steer the kids away from the mentality he and his friends had when they were young.
Ketchmore’s staff hears from kids who carry guns because they’re afraid of being bullied or being robbed after school. They can get guns cheaply on the streets and, like people who carry for Second Amendment reasons, the kids like the sense of power, safety and control guns give them. But he tells them to remove themselves from a situation in which they feel they need a gun — distance themselves from “beefs.”
“You feel like you need a gun? Why? Because you’re right there. Don’t let your ego make you feel like you have to walk down the street and take care of a beef with a gun. Just leave. I tell them to put themselves in a position to win.”
A study published in the American Journal of Public Health investigated the link between gun possession and gun assault. It found that people with a gun were 4½ times more times likely to be shot in an assault compared to those who don’t.
“They don’t understand that those singular situations that they make in the heat of anger,” Jenkins said, “have lasting ramifications for them and their families.”
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