The first major ban on the open carrying of firearms — a Republican-led bill that was drafted after Black Panthers began hanging around the State Legislature in Sacramento with their guns on display — was signed in 1967 by none other than Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. The federal Gun Control Act of 1968 was primarily a reaction to the scourge of “Saturday night specials” — cheap handguns owned by the poor and the black. The National Rifle Association opposed neither law.

So the fact that one of the seminal Second Amendment cases in American history is named for a black plaintiff is a beautiful and moving thing indeed. McDonald v. Chicago, argued in 2010, was brought by Otis McDonald, a 76-year-old black man tired of watching his neighborhood give way to crime and gang warfare. The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that the Second Amendment applied not just to all people, but to the states as well as to the federal government, and that Chicago was therefore not permitted to prohibit Mr. McDonald from keeping a handgun for his defense.

Yet African-American activists typically refrain from involvement in the issue of gun rights. In October 2013, Shaneen Allen, 27, a black single mother of two, was arrested in New Jersey for carrying a firearm without a license (she was under the impression that her Pennsylvania concealed-carry permit was accepted across state lines), and threatened with a prison sentence of up to 11 years for her mistake.

But it was conservative publications, such as my own National Review, and the N.R.A. that came to her defense. The N.A.A.C.P. and the usual champions remained unusually quiet. (There was no news conference featuring the Rev. Al Sharpton.) They have been largely absent, too, from the case of Marissa Alexander, a black Florida woman given a 20-year sentence for firing a warning shot near her abusive husband.

It’s a problem of perception, an assumption that the Second Amendment is the province of whites, that cuts both ways. In 2009, as the first Tea Party rallies swept the country, Contessa Brewer of MSNBC showed a video of a man at an anti-Obamacare rally with a pistol on his hip and suggested that “there are questions about whether this has racial overtones ... white people showing up with guns.” Later, it came out that the man in the video was actually black.

At least 15 percent of African-Americans report that they own guns — about the same rate as all other “nonwhites.” But as anybody who has attended an N.R.A. convention can attest, there is a gaping hole in the organization’s membership. Look around the convention center and you will see plenty of women, a good number of Asians and Hispanics, and even a smattering of children. Blacks? Not so much.