BRIDGEVIEW, Ill.—It’s been an interesting year for Joseph Stanford to take over a gun range business near Chicago. He bought a struggling gun range in Bridgeview, about 15 miles southwest of Chicago, in January 2020. The pandemic hit, closing him down. Then a wave of violence hit Chicago. The city ended 2020 with about 4,000 shooting victims, up from about 2,600 in 2019. The number of clients at his range grew, many of them black and many of them new gun owners. Gun ownership spiked nationwide last year, with the biggest increase among black buyers, at 56 percent, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Two out of five sales were first-time buyers. Stanford took on a personal mission to not only teach new gun owners about their weapons, but also to influence how young black men in particular view guns. “When they see a gun, they automatically think this is …