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

Abstract

Objective: Using theories of group threat and research on the political dynamics of gun ownership, this article examines two research questions: To what extent does the political affiliation of the president of the United States shape gun ownership? Moreover, how does the president of the United States' political affiliation intersect with individuals' political alignments to impact gun ownership patterns? Methods: This study utilizes repeated cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey . Specifically, it uses logistic regression to examine the intersection of the political affiliation of the U.S. president in a given survey year and respondents' individual political identities. Results: Although there is no independent effect of the president's political affiliation on gun ownership, the results indicate there is an increase in reported gun ownership among Republicans when a Democrat was in office. A similar increase is observed for Democrats when a Republican is in office. Conclusion:These results demonstrate the linked macromicro dynamics of gun ownership, specifically for political contexts. KEYWORDS firearms, group threat, political partisanship, presidentDiscourse surrounding guns is rife with politically partisan rhetoric within the United States. Specifically, Republicans are portrayed as stalwarts of gun rights, while Democrats are perceived as a threat to Second Amendment freedoms and access to firearms. Despite gun policy at the national level having remained scant since the early 20th century (Vizzard 2014), gun rights/control has remained a prominent issue in the national political discourse. Gun rights advocates often frame Democratic officials/political elites as hostile to gun rights and perpetuate fear-based narratives about Democrats wanting to take guns away from, or limit firearm access among, "law-abiding citizens" (Melzer 2009;Steidley and Colen 2017). InThis is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.