As the 2024 elections near, gun violence is surfacing as a pivotal issue for Latino voters across the United States. This growing demographic is caught in a complex dynamic: they overwhelmingly support gun control, driven by the disproportionate impact of gun violence on their communities, yet they are increasingly purchasing firearms as a means of self-defense.
This urgency is echoed by activists like Phillip Gomez, a Berkeley student who founded the Latino Rifle Association in response to the 2019 El Paso shooting. "Latinos had been the target of a horrific terrorist attack by a white nationalist, and I knew that many Latinos were going to start exploring the prospect of armed self-defense," Gomez said in Berkeley Law interview. Concerned that traditional gun culture, symbolized by the National Rifle Association, was toxic and unsafe, Gomez created the LRA as a progressive, community-oriented alternative.
