A Black-owned firearms distributor in the Milwaukee area is working to bridge a gap in firearms education. In addition to having a retail store in West Allis, Prolific Arms Security Company offers firearm safety training to security businesses and to the public.
Prolific Arms Security Company recently hosted a concealed carry course at the Clara Mohammed School on West Wright Street in Milwaukee’s Harambee neighborhood. Residents, predominantly Black women, filled the seats in the school’s first-floor cafeteria.
The course is led by Prolific Arms co-owners Eddie Silas and Theron Rogers.
They cover topics such as secure storage for firearms, legal responsibility, child safety around weapons and more. Courses are hosted at various locations across the city to meet people where they are.
Rogers says he and Silas are educators first and a firearms business second.
"As Black men in Milwaukee," Rogers says, "knowing the issues that our community has faced as it relates to gun violence, part of our purpose and our passion — and when I say part of it, the greater part of our purpose and passion — should be as subject matter experts, right, to bridge the gap as it relates to access to reputable, good, safe, responsible information as it relates to firearms."
Rogers says creating accessible firearm education, especially for Black residents impacted by gun violence, is a driving force behind Prolific Arms’ work.
According to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, gun violence disproportionately affects Black Americans.
In 2023, victims and suspects of both fatal and nonfatal shootings in Milwaukee were disproportionately Black males in their late 20s to early 30s. That’s according to a National Institute for Criminal Justice assessment.
Rogers talks about the current attitude surrounding Black gun ownership in Milwaukee and how Prolific Arms aims to shift it.
"There’s all these negative connotations in our community as it relates to firearms, you know, guns kill people, there are too many guns in our community and all these different things," Rogers says. "Across the country, right, even across Wisconsin and communities that don't look like us, our white counterparts have just as many firearms in their communities — you know, in their villages, right in their suburbs — as we do in the city of Milwaukee. What’s one of the major differences? One of the major differences is access to education," he says.
Rogers says without education, what people learn about guns comes from movies, music and video games.
"It should be coming from trained individuals in our community, training our community members. And then those community members are empowered and educated, then they're training and educating their children, right, just like anything else."
Rogers says teaching adults and children how to respect and safely navigate firearms is vital.
And he thinks that increasing education could help reduce gun injuries and deaths in Milwaukee.
"Firearms aren't going anywhere in America, so just because we either don't like them being here or we want to ignore them being here, it's a pitfall. We set ourselves up for failure, and we continue to set our kids up for failure," Rogers says.
"Can we prevent 100% of the incidental shootings and negligent shootings that happen in our community? Probably not. But can we strive to prevent all of them? Yes. And striving to prevent 100% of them, maybe we prevent 90% of them. So if we save one youth’s life, you know, I’m happy with that."
Rogers adds that the firearm education Prolific Arms is providing for the community is one way of giving the public, youth especially, the future they deserve.
