Howard owns 617 Defense, a company that offers firearms training throughout Greater Boston. He’s also president of the Massachusetts chapter of the National African American Gun Association, an organization that boasts 45,000 members nationwide, nearly half of them women. And he’s one of several local Black entrepreneurs serving a growing market niche: Black people who feel the need to arm themselves.

Greater Boston is famously safe compared to other US metro areas. But not quite safe enough for Howard — or his students. He warns the students that 911 is not enough, that it generally takes 10 or 15 minutes for the police to arrive.

“You are your own first responder,” Howard said. “No one’s going to save you. You’re going to save yourself.”

Despite a high level of gun violence in many Black communities, Black people are much less likely than whites to own guns. A 2024 study from Pew Research found guns in only 34 percent of Black US households compared with 49 percent of white households.

The ownership gap might be due in part to a history of racist efforts to keep Black people disarmed. After the Civil War, for instance, many Southern states made gun ownership illegal for Blacks. And even where it was legal, Black people often faced unjust discrimination and were not allowed to obtain gun permits. When Martin Luther King’s home was bombed in 1956, he requested a gun permit to defend his family. But authorities in Montgomery, Ala., refused.

But there’s evidence that more Black households are arming up. After the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, the National Shooting Sports Foundation reported a spike in gun purchases by Blacks. The organization’s latest survey finds that African Americans comprise 32 percent of people who’ve taken up shooting in the past five years, the biggest increase of any demographic group.

Howard said he’s seen rising attendance at his classes, which he began teaching three years ago. He said he believes the root cause is declining trust in government.

“People are taking control of their own lives and doing what they have to do for protecting themselves and their family members,” Howard said. “They’re making their decisions, instead of waiting on the government to help them out.”

Howard is a vocal opponent of laws limiting gun ownership that were enacted in Massachusetts last year. He keeps a loaded pistol on his hip and said law-abiding people of every race should always be ready to defend themselves.

You’ll hear the same sentiment from Howard’s friend and business competitor Antonio Miles, a Black New Hampshire resident who runs the training company Urban Shooting Experience. A former car salesman who grew up in Roxbury, he first took up arms out of concern for his family.

“My ‘why’ is my three daughters,” Miles said. “I wanted to be able to defend my family by any means necessary.”

He also sees himself as a role model.

“I wanted to bridge a gap on people who look like me teaching about firearms,” Miles said.

Both Miles and Howard offer gun classes to men and women of all races, but they primarily cater to gun-curious African Americans.

It all makes perfect sense to Nicholas Johnson, a Black man who teaches law at Fordham University in New York.

“I grew up in Black gun culture,” Johnson said. “I grew up in rural West Virginia; everybody had guns.” But as a young faculty member, he felt a chill in the air whenever he discussed the Second Amendment.

“If you were a good liberal and had a good social conscience you were supposed to be anti-gun,” Johnson said. “And I wasn’t.”

Years later, Johnson co-authored what he believes to be the first academic textbook devoted to US firearms law. He’s also written “Negroes and the Gun,” a book about how Black people have a long history of relying on personal firearms for defense against racist mobs and criminals.

Meanwhile, Johnson said, there has historically been “tremendous bias in enforcement” of gun laws in the United States. For instance, in 2018 the US Sentencing Commission found Black people were far more likely than whites to be convicted of illegal gun possession.

“We end up with gun-control policy that operates in a kind of perverse intersection of the interests of white liberals and white conservatives,” Johnson said. Conservatives dislike gun laws, Johnson said, but don’t mind them being used to lock up Black men; liberals want fewer Black people in prison but are happy to see brisk enforcement of the gun laws.

But instructors like Howard and Miles might help break the cycle by ensuring that Black gun owners know the rules. Both teach a two-hour basic firearms safety course certified by the National Rifle Association. It’s just the first step in getting a Massachusetts firearms license. Each person must also get a “license to carry” issued by their city police department.

One of Howard’s students, sixty-something and retired, already owns several guns and is now interested in making it legal. Others are first-timers.

“When I was in my early 20s I was grazed by a gun,” said Jermaine McNeill, 46, of Dorchester, a housing inspector and podcaster. “I had friends of mine who were shot with guns. So I just had a fear of them.”

McNeill had a change of heart after he interviewed Howard for his podcast.

These days he’s convinced that gun ownership makes sense, and not just for himself.

“My daughter is 15 years old,” he said, “and I told her, whether you like it or not, when you get older, you’re gonna learn how to shoot.”

Also in attendance were attorney Rochelle Jones, 34, of Randolph and her 32-year-old schoolteacher brother Marcus Jones of Weymouth. Both are interested in personal protection, but Rochelle Jones said gun ownership is frowned upon by left-leaning people like herself.

“I’m not thinking too much of the stigma,” she said, adding, “It’s there, sure.”

Marcus Jones said he wants to dispel the stereotype of Black men as trigger-happy killers.

“I know going forward that I can be a model to show people that we are responsible about this,” he said, “and it’s not just always the negative stuff you see in the news.”

The training is over in two hours, and not a shot is fired. For that, they’ll have to sign up for the two-day basic handgun course, featuring a trip to a gun range. Howard also teaches rifle, shotgun, and even a course called “Stop The Bleed” that teaches lifesaving measures for people who’ve taken a bullet.

“All the Black instructors I know say some of their students, they had friends who got shot,” Howard said. “They didn’t know how to save their life.”

But for Howard, all his courses are about saving lives. He said crime-ridden Black communities will become a lot safer when a lot more of their law-abiding residents have guns and know how to use them.

“To the average person who lives in the suburbs, it doesn’t seem right to them,” Howard said. “But have them trade places.”

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at hiawatha.bray@globe.com. Follow him @GlobeTechLab.