Awash in a Sea of Faith and Firearms: Rediscovering the Connection Between Religion and Gun Ownership in America

Abstract

The United States is awash in a sea of both faith and firearms. Although sociologists and criminologists have been trying to understand the predictors of gun ownership in the United States since the 1970s, it has been over two decades since social scientists of religion have been part of this important conversation. Consequently, religion is nothing more than a control variable in most studies of gun ownership. Even then, scholars have rarely gone beyond a basic measure of religious affiliation in which Protestant = 1 (else = 0). This article therefore seeks to bring social scientists studying religion back into the conversation about gun ownership in America and to move the discussion forward incrementally. It does so in three ways. First, it employs a more sophisticated measure of religious affiliation than has been used to study gun ownership in the past. Second, it measures religiosity beyond simply religious affiliation. Third, it recognizes and seeks to specify some of the various ways in which the relationship between religion and gun ownership may be mediated by other religiously influenced sociopolitical orientations. Using data from the 2006–2014 General Social Survey, hierarchical binary logistic regression models show significant effects of evangelical Protestant affiliation, theological conservatism, and religious involvement on personal handgun ownership.

In-home firearm access among US adolescents and the role of religious subculture: Results from a nationally representative study

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