Status Politics and the Political Influences of Concealed Handgun License Demand in Texas

What Guns Mean: Who Sees Guns as Important, Essential, and Empowering (and Why)?

“…For instance, challenges to one’s personal cultural worldview (Hirschberger, Pyszczynski, and Ein‐Dor 2009), and real (or perceived) social change (Britto 2013; Hirtenlehner and Farrall 2013; Jackson 2006) can lead to individual feelings of threat. As has been demonstrated within firearm research, threat‐based dynamics contribute both to increases in gun ownership (Steidley and Kosla 2018; Steidley and Trujillo 2020; Wright, Rossi, and Daly 1983) and more favorable attitudes toward guns (Warner 2020). Theories of risk perception argue that what people fear does not stem from individual cognitive assessments of personal threat to self/safety, but rather to socially shared worldviews (Rippl 2002)—the distal or diffuse anxieties, as discussed above.…”

“…Jouet (2019:2) recently described guns as “symbols of a peculiar conception of nationhood and identity” and as “…objects that can foster a sense of belonging.” Guns function as symbols that are intertwined not just with collective identities based on hierarchies of race, gender, and class, but also with broader themes of freedom, protection, danger, and safety; it is these very entanglements that likely situates gun ownership as especially reactive to (real or perceived) threats against any of these identities and/or themes. For instance, while the links between crime/victimization‐related threats and guns is somewhat unclear (see below), scholars have illustrated how guns become more salient in response to threats to identities and perspectives connected with masculine status, white authority, political ideology, and economic (in)security (Carlson 2015a; Filindra, Kaplan, and Buyuker 2020; Mencken and Froese 2019; Steidley and Kosla 2018; Steidley and Trujillo 2020; Stroud 2016).…”

“…Using these political identities and their corresponding ideologies, gun rights organizations—particularly the NRA—have strategically cultivated a politicized gun owner social identity (e.g., framing owners as patriotic, law abiding, ordinary citizens), and then mobilized this identity for political action by portraying it as under attack from “big city, urban, elitist” politicians (Lacombe 2019; Melzer 2009; see also Steidley and Kosla 2018). Even more recent work has highlighted how these political dynamics explain gun ownership patterns more robustly than do real or perceived crime patterns (Steidley and Trujillo 2020).…”

Presidential firepower: The effect of the presidential party on gun ownership, 1980–2018

“…When men perceive a loss of power, such as increased female employment or (perceived) potential unemployment, they are also more likely to turn to guns to reassert their power and take on a masculine protector status (Carlson 2015;Cassino and Besen-Cassino 2020;. As for Republicans, not only are they more likely to support gun rights and gun ownership generally, but as Democrats acquire increased political power (e.g., percent of Democrats in a legislative body), there is an increase in Concealed Handgun License (CHL) demand (Steidley and Trujillo 2021)-a proxy for firearm ownership.…”

“…Ranging from threats of violence vis-à-vis victimization/fear of crime (Warner 2020;Warner and Ratcliff 2021) to racial threat (Filindra, Kaplan, and Buyker 2021;Flores 2015;Warner and Steidley 2021) and gender threat (Cassino and Besen-Cassino 2020;, threatbased dynamics are central to gun ownership in the United States. However, scholars have yet to explore how (perceived) threats to political power and resources may impact gun ownership patterns (but see Steidley and Trujillo 2021). Specifically, this article seeks to understand how macro-level political contexts, specifically the political affiliation of the president of the United States, impacts individual-level firearm ownership.…”