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Those of us in favor of stronger laws to abate gun violence mostly support our cause by arguing against the claims of the gun lobby (roughly, the N.R.A. and gun manufacturers). It should by now be obvious that this is a waste of time. The case for action is overwhelming, but there’s no chance of convincing the entrenched minority who are so personally (or financially) invested in gun ownership. Legislative efforts have failed because the opposition is more deeply committed — more energized, more organized, more persistent.

My purpose here is not to continue arguing with the gun lobby or even to discuss the precise form that new gun legislation should take. Instead, I’m interested in understanding the intensity gap and how we might overcome it. Only when there’s a sustained passion against gun violence will there be a meaningful chance of effective action.

Our permissive gun laws are a manifestation of racism, an evil that, in other contexts, most gun-control advocates see as a fundamental threat to American society.

It might seem that fear of gun violence is the great motivator. Pro-gun advocates see guns as our best defense against armed criminals. Anti-gun advocates see the wide availability of guns as a greater threat than criminal violence. The issue seems to come down to what you fear more: criminals or guns.

But the passion of the gun lobby goes much deeper than fear of criminals. As Firmin DeBrabander’s excellent book, “Do Guns Make Us Free?” demonstrates, the basic motivation of the pro-gun movement is freedom from government interference. They talk about guns for self-defense, but their core concern is their constitutional right to bear arms, which they see as the foundation of American freedom. The right to own a gun is, as the N.R.A. website puts it, “the right that protects all other rights.” Their galvanizing passion is a hatred of tyranny. Like many other powerful political movements, the gun lobby is driven by hatred of a fundamental evil that it sees as a threat to our way of life — an existential threat — quite apart from any specific local or occasional dangers.

The intensity gap exists because opponents of gun violence have no corresponding deep motivation. We cite suicide rates, urban violence, and, especially, mass shootings as horrors requiring more effective gun laws. But few of us actually see guns as existential threats to fundamental American values. In this, however, we are mistaken. Our permissive gun laws are a manifestation of racism, an evil that, in other contexts, most gun-control advocates see as a fundamental threat to American society.

We’ve heard a lot recently about how blacks still don’t feel safe in this country. You can argue about how seriously to take complaints from black students at elite universities or even whether outrageous cases of unjustified police shootings are just isolated occurrences. But there’s no argument that black people in the “bad parts” of our cities have to live with utterly unacceptable levels of gun violence. In 2010, blacks, who make up only 13 percent of the population, were 55 percent of gun homicide victims. It’s no surprise that blacks favor stricter gun controls considerably more than whites do.

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How does racism enter into this picture? Let me put it in personal terms. I spend a fair amount of time in Chicago, where the newspapers regularly offer front-page reports of shootings from the previous night. Checking The Tribune on a recent morning, I learned that two people were killed and a dozen wounded. You might think that a steady stream of such reports (this year, Chicago will have over 2,700 shootings, with over 400 people killed) would induce high levels of fear, especially since many shootings occur on the streets. In fact, I’m not particularly afraid, since — like most Chicagoans — I’m hardly ever where the violence occurs. There’s something to worry about only if you live in certain overwhelmingly black communities on the West and South sides of town. (The papers publish helpful maps showing how the killings are distributed.) These are where almost all the shootings occur, and the large majority of victims (and perpetrators) are black. The patterns are similar in other large American cities, so that those who live with gun violence as an imminent, personal threat are mostly black.

But imagine if there regularly were shootings in previously “safe” white areas. Now there are frequent killings on the Magnificent Mile, the Gold Coast and in Lincoln Park. Both the perpetrators and the victims are white, and, despite greatly increased police protection, the violence continues. Given the strong support for gun control among residents of these areas, the cause would quickly become very personal. Chicago has relatively strong gun laws, but the city borders on Indiana, where the laws are much laxer. My neighbors and I would join a vigorous and relentless campaign for stricter national gun laws.

This isn’t our reaction to gun violence in black parts of town. Does this mean that we’re racists? Perhaps not. Perhaps we just haven’t realized the extent to which gun violence is destroying urban black communities. But once we realize this, our passion for justice and hatred of racism should galvanize us to action. Here the parallel to the Black Lives Matter movement is instructive. When black protesters convinced whites that striking examples of unjustified police violence were not just occasional aberrations, the whites supported protests against what they now saw as a racist practice. Similarly, white supporters of gun control should join with blacks — including mayors of major cities — who have recognized the racist effects of gun proliferation.

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The case for the racist effect of our permissive gun laws is especially powerful. There’s no way of explaining away all these deaths as aberrations. If we fail to oppose with equal passion and vigor the relentless political pressure of (mostly white) gun advocates, we force a large number of black citizens to live with the constant threat of gun violence. We’re in effect letting the Second Amendment trump the Fourteenth Amendment, implicitly preferring the right of gun ownership to the right of black people to live free from fear.

The gun lobby, of course, will say that gun control laws won’t help. Some will also dismiss gun violence as a “black problem” since it’s often a matter of blacks attacking other blacks. But here I’m not concerned with refuting gun-lobby arguments. I’m speaking to those who already agree that we need stronger gun laws and who realize that when our fellow citizens are dying and there’s something we can do about it, it’s morally vacant to say it’s their problem. Hatred of racism should be a major motivation for the gun control movement. This will give it the vigor and persistence needed to overcome the gun lobby’s passionate fantasy that citizens with guns protect us from tyranny.

Gary Gutting is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and an editor of Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. His new book, “What Philosophy Can Do” (W. W. Norton) offers essays, expanded from his Stone columns, on politics, science, religion, education and art.