Abstract:The COVID-19 pandemic and protests have marked an unprecedented increase in U.S. gun sales. But America has long been an outlier; the stockpile of private guns climbed to almost 300 million in 2017. Scholars use multiple theories to explain why gun sales have tripled since the early 2000s, and why disruptions like the pandemic might cause gun sales. However, scholars have difficulty evaluating these theories with existing retrospective estimates of gun sales and other measures, limiting their ability to test t… Show more
“…As quasi-maximum likelihood estimators that are also quasi-parametric, FLRs do not necessitate any particular probability distribution function of the outcome variable (Gourieroux et al, 1984 ) and are resilient to error non-normality and functional form misspecification (White, 1982 :4). Recent interval outcome measures research (e.g., Sola, 2021 ) confirms prior assessments (e.g., Ramalho et al, 2011 ) that FLRs outperform OLS regressions. Fig.…”
Section: Analytic Plansupporting
confidence: 54%
“…For the high-severity and lower ambiguity vignette, we added property damage (breaking of a windshield), potential theft, and the presence of a gun. Theft and crimes involving cars are not uncommon, and US gun ownership is common (e.g., Miller et al, 2022 ; Sola, 2021 ).…”
Section: Data Collection and Experimental Designmentioning
Objectives
There
is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA. We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police.
Methods
We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 participants, varying vignette racial composition (subjects described as black or white) and seriousness of event (less serious, more ambiguous or more serious, less ambiguous) to test two outcomes: 1) desire to call the police and 2) perceived threat.
Results
Perceived race does not directly affect mean desire to call the police or perceived threat. However, political views moderate the effects of race: compared to politically moderate participants, very liberal participants express less desire to call the police while very conservative participants express more desire to call the police in a vignette featuring young Black men.
Conclusions
The political polarization of desire to call the police raises questions about racially differentiated risk of more serious criminal justice system events, including arrest and incarceration, for racial and ethnic minorities.
“…As quasi-maximum likelihood estimators that are also quasi-parametric, FLRs do not necessitate any particular probability distribution function of the outcome variable (Gourieroux et al, 1984 ) and are resilient to error non-normality and functional form misspecification (White, 1982 :4). Recent interval outcome measures research (e.g., Sola, 2021 ) confirms prior assessments (e.g., Ramalho et al, 2011 ) that FLRs outperform OLS regressions. Fig.…”
Section: Analytic Plansupporting
confidence: 54%
“…For the high-severity and lower ambiguity vignette, we added property damage (breaking of a windshield), potential theft, and the presence of a gun. Theft and crimes involving cars are not uncommon, and US gun ownership is common (e.g., Miller et al, 2022 ; Sola, 2021 ).…”
Section: Data Collection and Experimental Designmentioning
Objectives
There
is little scholarship about what affects calls for service, even as they originate the vast majority of police interventions in the USA. We test how racial perceptions, ambiguous situational contexts, and participant demographics affect desire to call the police.
Methods
We conduct a nationwide survey experiment with 2,038 participants, varying vignette racial composition (subjects described as black or white) and seriousness of event (less serious, more ambiguous or more serious, less ambiguous) to test two outcomes: 1) desire to call the police and 2) perceived threat.
Results
Perceived race does not directly affect mean desire to call the police or perceived threat. However, political views moderate the effects of race: compared to politically moderate participants, very liberal participants express less desire to call the police while very conservative participants express more desire to call the police in a vignette featuring young Black men.
Conclusions
The political polarization of desire to call the police raises questions about racially differentiated risk of more serious criminal justice system events, including arrest and incarceration, for racial and ethnic minorities.
“…In another experimental study, Justin Sola (2021) investigates a unique manipulation relevant to the desire to buy guns. After validating a new measure of gun desirability, the author finds that exposure to a one-minute video reporting long lines and shortages at grocery stores, pharmacies, liquor outlets, and gun stores increases the desire for guns, net of a host of controls, including political ideology, religious identity, and gun ownership.…”
Section: Contributions To the Special Issuementioning
“…A stock of over 350 million civilian firearms ( 6 ), the largest in the world ( 7 ), facilitates the toll of gun suicides, injuries, and homicides. This stock has surged because Americans are purchasing firearms at an unprecedented rate—up to 2 million per month ( 8 , 9 ).…”
Over 45,000 gun deaths occur annually in the United States, a country with more than 100 million gun owners and more than 350 million guns. Nevertheless, passing legislation to reduce gun violence is difficult because the issue is intensely polarized. Polls asking about general gun policies (e.g., AR-15 restrictions) demonstrate that, at least in the abstract, Americans disagree vehemently about whether civilians should be able to keep and bear arms. It is possible, however, that a hidden consensus exists in America, which has thus far escaped attention—specifically, that when the focus is on their immediate environments and daily lives, even traditionally pro-gun groups may exhibit aversion to certain types of gun ownership and storage practices. To test this, we conducted two preregistered survey experiments with a large national sample. The first was a conjoint analysis where respondents chose between neighbors (n = 33,596 choices) who randomly varied on seven attributes, including gun ownership (none, pistol, AR-15). No group of respondents, not even traditionally pro-gun groups (e.g., Republicans), exhibited a significant preference for living near gun owners, and every group was averse to AR-15-owning neighbors. The second experiment, per debates about safe-storage laws, was a picture-based factorial vignette that randomized a neighbor’s gun storage practices (n = 2,098). Every group of respondents was averse to interacting with a neighbor who stored guns outside of a locked safe. Our findings demonstrate that there is widespread agreement that certain types of gun ownership and storage practices are undesirable for communities.
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