WASHINGTON - In February 2015, Philip Smith started a Facebook group to make space for the often-overlooked concerns of law-abiding, license-carrying gun owners who happen to be African-American. Smith said he was tired of feeling conspicuous as the only black guy at the gun ranges he visited. Surely, he thought, there must be others out there, dealing with the same suspicions he faced when passers-by glimpsed the Glock on his hip. A year and a half later, Smith counts more than 11,000 members, representing all 50 states.

WASHINGTON � In February 2015, Philip Smith started a Facebook group to make space for the often-overlooked concerns of law-abiding, license-carrying gun owners who happen to be African-American.

Smith said he was tired of feeling conspicuous as the only black guy at the gun ranges he visited. Surely, he thought, there must be others out there, dealing with the same suspicions he faced when passers-by glimpsed the Glock on his hip.

A year and a half later, Smith counts more than 11,000 members, representing all 50 states.

Smith�s forum reflects what researchers see as growing interest among African-Americans in gun ownership. But becoming a black licensed gun owner is not a risk-free prospect, a fact brought to light this month by the police shooting of Philando Castile, who had a permit to carry a concealed weapon when he was shot in his car July 6, and by the presence at a Dallas rally the next day of perhaps 30 marchers openly carrying rifles.

Dallas police mistakenly labeled a black licensed gun owner as a �person of interest� after a black gunman who was not part of the rally opened fire, killing five police officers.

Despite black members of Congress regularly championing gun restrictions, many African-Americans now see gun ownership as an important civil-rights cause, in the spirit of abolitionist Frederick Douglass� comment in 1867 that a man�s rights lay in three boxes: �the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box.�

In African-American gun groups such as Smith�s, members are expressing a mix of fear and defiance over the incidents.

�We have a lot of work to do,� Smith said. �We have to buckle down and work for full Second Amendment rights for African-American men and women. We work, we pay taxes and we�re not going to take this second-class treatment anymore. But one person can�t do it. It has to be done by a community.�

For decades, African-American gun owners say, they�ve battled racism from within pro-gun circles as well as scorn from fellow African-Americans who don�t always share their view of gun ownership as a civil-rights imperative.

There are signs that attitudes are shifting. A survey by the Pew Research Center found that 54 percent of blacks now see gun ownership as a good thing � more likely to protect than to harm � compared with 29 percent just two years ago.

Predominantly black gun clubs and online forums report spikes in interest, especially among women. Smith said black women made up 65 percent of his online group�s membership � from ordinary professional women seeking protection to dealers such as Francine James-Jones, owner of Bubbas Gun Sales in Georgia. She is a rarity as an African-American woman holding a federal firearm license.

Blacks have a long history of gun ownership � and an equally long experience, historians say, with whites trying to disarm them.

Blacks often kept guns for practical reasons such as hunting, but the main reason for many was protection from white mobs and groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. Gun enthusiasts are quick to remind critics � correctly, historians say � that gun-control laws have their roots in racist policies. Throughout slavery, the Civil War, the Reconstruction years and the Jim Crow era, historians say, laws were enacted to separate black people from firearms.

As a result, gun ownership became an important plank in early civil-rights activism until the 1960s, when �establishment black politicians� teamed up with white progressives and began backing away from the idea of gun ownership, said Nicholas Johnson, a law professor at Fordham University in New York City who wrote the 2014 book �Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition of Arms.�

Although historians quibble over the details, Johnson said, there are accounts that even Martin Luther King Jr., an icon of nonviolence, applied for a gun permit after his house was attacked � but he was denied one.

�People have a hard time thinking about that history because they can�t reconcile it with their more-general assessment that the freedom struggle was all about this more-nonviolent strategy,� Johnson said. �It�s true that at the broader political level, they had the assessment that the nonviolent strategy was the way to go, but they were all, almost to a person up until the 1960s, of the opinion that individual self-defense was a proper and necessary resource.�

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the conservative African-American jurist known for his hostility toward affirmative action, surprised even his critics in 2010 by decrying the denial of blacks their Second Amendment rights in what a Washington Post columnist at the time called �a scorcher of an opinion that reads like a mix of black history lesson and Black Panther Party manifesto.�

�The use of firearms for self-defense was often the only way black citizens could protect themselves from mob violence,� Thomas wrote, going on to explain that white citizen patrols and militias such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Brotherhood once terrorized blacks and forcibly disarmed them.

Yet more than 150 years after the Civil War, African-Americans say, their Second Amendment rights remain theoretical.

�The most cynical among us say open carry is for whites,� said Adolphus Belk, director of the African-American Studies Program at Winthrop University in South Carolina. �This is a civil-liberties debate. Are African-Americans and people of color able to exercise their constitutional rights when it comes to maintaining firearms?�Belk singled out the National Rifle Association for criticism, saying it has failed to bring attention to the rights of black gun owners with the same energy it applies to lobbying against restrictions on gun sales. The NRA�s most prominent black voice, whose stage name is Colion Noir, has spoken openly of trying to change the stereotype that persists of NRA membership as �old, fat white guys.�

But Noir said critics who had complained that the NRA was slow to comment on Castile�s death were disingenuous.

�The NRA doesn�t need to make a statement about Philando because they gave him his own show,� Noir said, saying that he, too, is a black man with a concealed-carry permit. �I�ve been fighting for gun rights under the NRA brand for years. Y�all just got here.

�Call me a coon and Uncle Tom when I�m fighting for the same damn rights that Martin Luther King, Huey P. Newton and Malcolm X fought for."

James Hughes, a 22-year-old African-American gun enthusiast and Army National Guardsman, said his NRA membership gets him discounts at gun ranges and restaurants.

The son of a police officer, Hughes received his first gun from an uncle at age 8 � a .22-caliber for shooting squirrels � and began competitive shooting at age 10. He recalled being the only black kid in most of the events and was proud to have won first place in skeet shooting, and other medals for long-range and pistol contests.

His personal arsenal includes two AK-47s, one SKS, three AR-15s and three bolt-action rifles. Until recently, he worked at a gun shop in his hometown, Monroe, North Carolina.

Hughes said he's well aware of the assumptions people can make about gun-toting black men � passers-by once called police on him for playing with a paintball round � so he has cultivated relationships with the local law-enforcement officers so that there are no misunderstandings.

Still, being a black gun owner can be lonely. �I still go to the range, and I rarely see a single black person there,� he said.