Gun Owners and Gun Control: Shared Status, Divergent Opinions

Abstract

After each mass public shooting, an inevitable debate surrounding the tools used to carry out the attack ensues. This debate is marked by two sides: those who endorse controlling access to firearms and those who oppose restrictions to the Second Amendment. Implicit in this dialogue is the assumption that gun owners are a homogenous group who stand in opposition to the gun control legislation. Using a national sample of American gun‐owning adults, we examine gun control attitudes among those who share the gun owner‐status and uncover divergent views split down political lines. Political partisanship and values are a major source of gun owners’ policy preferences. Republican gun owners and those with rightward political values are more likely to oppose gun control measures. Gun control, it seems, is politicized even among those who own guns, which suggests guns are political symbols with a meaning that extends beyond mere self‐interest in protecting ownership status.

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

“…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.…”

“…If gun ownership influences political opinions (Burton, Logan, et al 2021; Joslyn 2020), political affiliation also plays a significant role in terms of whether and how individuals are introduced to gun culture. For instance, going to a college with a higher proportion of Republican students makes it more likely to have access to a shooting sports organization on campus (McElroy and Coley 2021).…”

“…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.…”

Are guns the new dog whistle? Gun control, racial resentment, and vote choice*

“…When it comes to understanding gun attitudes, the form of racial prejudice that is most theoretically germane is racial resentment (Filindra & Kaplan, 2016; O'Brien et al., 2013)—a symbolic form of prejudice that is less explicit than traditional racism and that reflects a merging of anti‐Black affect with denials of discrimination (Kinder & Sanders, 1996; Rabinowitz et al., 2009). As Filindra and Kaplan (2017, p. 417) argued, “the narrative of gun rights as developed since the 1970s reflects a discourse of racial resentment.” Consistent with this argument, a growing number of studies found that racially resentful Americans tend to oppose gun control (Burton, Logan, et al., 2021; Filindra & Kaplan, 2016, 2017; O'Brien et al., 2013; Wetts & Willer, 2019) and tend to own more guns (Filindra et al., 2021; O'Brien et al., 2013). More broadly, two decades of research demonstrated that racial resentment is one of the strongest and most consistent predictors of criminal justice attitudes (Bobo & Johnson, 2004; Brown & Socia, 2017; Drakulich et al., 2020; Enns & Ramirez, 2018; Matsueda & Drakulich, 2009; Pickett & Chiricos, 2012; Simmons, 2017; Unnever & Cullen, 2010).…”

Gun Ownership, Threat, and Gun Attitudes in an Experiment

“…Unsurprisingly, gun owners hold particular attitudes about gun policy in the United States. In general, they are much more supportive of expanding gun rights than their non-gun owning counterparts (Parker et al 2017), but gun owners are not uniform in their opposition to gun regulation (Burton et al 2021; Siegel et al 2021). Although there are a number of gun regulation policies on which gun owners and non-gun owners agree, there are many on which they strongly disagree, with gun owners generally rejecting gun ownership restrictions (Barry et al 2018; Parker et al 2017).…”