Understanding the Political Divide in Gun Policy Support

Losee, Joy E.; Pogge, Gabrielle; Lipsey, Nikolette P.; Shepperd, James A.

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-55513-9_9

Cited by 7 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 44 publications

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“…The main finding that emerges from this study is that gun owners differ greatly in terms of their level of engagement in gun-related activities, reasons for owning a firearm, values, and beliefs. Our findings demonstrate support for the position, as a recent wave of studies have showed (Boine et al 2020; Burton, Logan, et al 2021; Burton, Pickett, et al 2021; Celinska 2007; Jouet 2019; Lacombe et al 2019; Losee et al 2021; Mencken and Froese 2019; Warner and Ratcliff 2021; Yamane 2017, Yamane et al 2021), that the gun-owning population is far more complex than that depicted by stereotypes displayed in the media and sometimes found in existing scholarship on gun owners. Another way gun owners differ is the extent to which they adhere to a collective gun owner identity.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

“…First, as Kelley and Ellison (2021) showed, gun ownership is fluid in the sense that people come in and out of it. Even though specific beliefs and circumstances increase the probability of gun ownership, such as believing that firearms make one safer (Losee et al 2021), a person does not become radically different when they obtain a gun. In this regard, one’s adherence to a gun culture can be seen as a point in a multidimensional space, with coordinates on different axes denoting parameters such as the levels of engagement, attachment, enthusiasm, and social interactions with firearms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Third, the differences in the meanings that guns accrue to gun owners lead to significant differences in terms of which policies they support (Burton, Logan, et al 2021; Burton, Pickett, et al 2021; Joslyn 2020; Lacombe 2019; Losee et al 2021; Yamane, DeDeyne, and Méndez 2021). This is important as legal norms and policies on firearms are an integral part of a gun culture, and there is a mutual influence between them and individuals.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Who Are Gun Owners in the United States? A Latent Class Analysis of the 2019 National Lawful Use of Guns Survey

Boine

Caffrey

Siegel

2021

Sociological Perspectives

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We used data from the 2019 National Lawful Use of Guns Survey to segment the gun-owning population into different subcultural categories. Performing a latent class analysis, we introduce six types of indicators: (1) the types of firearm owned, (2) the reported primary reason for owning a firearm, (3) involvement in various gun-related activities, (4) Second Amendment activism, (5) the extent to which those in one’s social network own guns, and (6) measures of symbolic meanings attached to firearms. We introduce gender, race, U.S. region, and political affiliation as covariates. We find six classes of gun owners. The largest group (28 percent) is composed of family protectors who go to the shooting range and feel empowered by their guns. The second largest category (19 percent) is made up of incidental gun owners motivated by protection or family tradition. The third group (18 percent) consists of Second Amendment activists who engage in multiple gun-related activities and are resistant to social change. The fourth category (13 percent) contains target shooters. The fifth group (12 percent) is made up of hunters. The sixth category (11 percent), self-protectors, has a majority of women (51 percent). Our findings add to a very recent body of literature on variations in the meanings that guns have for people. In particular, we demonstrate that there are stark cultural differences between gun owners and that the body of existing research on this topic has mostly focused on the Second Amendment activists, who only represent about 18 percent of all gun owners.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 85%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Who Are Gun Owners in the United States? A Latent Class Analysis of the 2019 National Lawful Use of Guns Survey

Boine

Caffrey

Siegel

2021

Sociological Perspectives

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“…Additionally, Americans who are politically conservative generally favor less restrictive gun policies than do Americans who are politically liberal (Parker et al, 2017; Pearson-Merkowitz & Dyck, 2017), and this preference corresponds closely with the greater tendency for political conservatives to view guns as a source of safety (Losee et al, 2021). Importantly, these effects occur independently of the fact that political conservatives are more likely to be gun owners (Losee et al, 2021). Although evidence suggests that gun purchases during the pandemic ignored party lines (Lang & Lang, 2020), the prior findings for gun attitudes led us to expect that political conservatives would be more likely than political liberals to report interest in purchasing a gun in response to perceived threats created by the pandemic, and that perceiving guns as a source of safety would underlie that interest.…”

Section: Who Wanted To Purchase a Firearm?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Who Wanted To Purchase a Firearm?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Interest in purchasing firearms in the United States at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kerner¹,

Losee²,

Higginbotham³

et al. 2022

Journal of Threat Assessment and Management

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An increased demand for guns followed the arrival of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the U.S. Although firearms cannot prevent virus transmission, research suggests that, for some, firearms play a role in satisfying safety needs. We surveyed U.S. residents (N = 1,354; predominantly White) between April 6 and May 15, 2020, using ResearchMatch to examine who was purchasing firearms and to examine whether various pandemic concerns (e.g., infection, crime, and government threat to guns) were linked to interest in purchasing firearms. We also examined whether perceiving guns as a source of safety was a superordinate factor in predicting gun purchase interest that accounted for the variance observed with other predictors. Gun owners and political conservatives were more likely than non-owners and political liberals to express interest in purchasing firearms. Concern that the government would use COVID-19 to take guns was the strongest concern predicting firearm purchase interest followed by attitude toward Chinese people. However, perceiving guns as a source of safety accounted for most of the purchase interest. It absorbed all variance in firearm purchase interest attributable to political ideology, gun ownership, and attitude toward Chinese people, and part of the variance attributable to concerns with government threat to guns. Other pandemic concerns (e.g., concerns with infection or crime) absorbed no unique variance in firearm purchase interest. Finally, examination of reports of actual firearm purchases conformed closely with our findings for firearm purchase interest.

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When an irresistible prejudice meets immovable politics: Black legal gun ownership undermines racially resentful White Americans’ gun rights advocacy.

Higginbotham¹,

Sears²,

Goldstein³

2023

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Historical evidence suggests that White Americans’ support for gun rights (i.e., opposition to gun control) is challenged by Black Americans exercising their legal rights to guns (e.g., The Black Panther Party and the Mulford Act of 1967). Here, we examined two empirical questions. First, we tested whether White Americans implicitly racialize gun rights as “White.” In a preregistered study employing a novel IAT, racially resentful White Americans indirectly associated gun rights with White (and not Black) people. Moreover, this association was not primarily based in partisanship. Racial resentment overwhelmed the effect of party identification in explaining this association (Study 1). Given racial resentment typically predicts stronger support for gun rights (Filindra & Kaplan, 2015; O'Brien et al., 2013), we next examined whether Black legal gun ownership undermines gun rights support among racially resentful White Americans across two studies (total N = 773), including a nationally representative sample of White partisans. In both studies, racially resentful White Americans expressed less support for a gun right (i.e., concealed-carry) when informed that Black (vs. White) Americans showed greater utilization of the gun right (Studies 2 and 3). Study 3 provided initial evidence suggesting that the observed reduced support is more closely linked to concerns about identity than security. Overall, these results support that Black legal gun ownership can reduce opposition to gun control among gun rights’ most entrenched advocates.

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Understanding the Political Divide in Gun Policy Support

Cited by 7 publications

References 44 publications

Who Are Gun Owners in the United States? A Latent Class Analysis of the 2019 National Lawful Use of Guns Survey

Who Are Gun Owners in the United States? A Latent Class Analysis of the 2019 National Lawful Use of Guns Survey

Interest in purchasing firearms in the United States at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

When an irresistible prejudice meets immovable politics: Black legal gun ownership undermines racially resentful White Americans’ gun rights advocacy.

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