No one knows Americans like foreign psychologists - and they have shown it. A new paper in an open access journal declared that there are higher levels of racism in white Americans who own a gun and oppose greater gun control policies and they imply that correlation is causation.
They used data from the American National Election Study (ANES), the leading large-scale psychological and socio-political attitudes survey in the US. After accounting for factors such as income, education and political ideology, they determined that for each one point increase (on a scale from one to five) in symbolic racism there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a gun in the home and a 28 percent increase in support for policies allowing people to carry concealed guns.
Each one point increase in symbolic racism (a modern measure of anti-black racism) was also associated with a 27 percent increase in the odds of opposing bans on hand guns in the home. After accounting for those who already had a gun in the home, the odds were reduced to a non-significant 17 percent increase. However, the authors note that this reduction is unsurprising as opposition to bans on guns equates to self interest on behalf of those who already own a gun and do not wish to give it up. And racism was already strongly associated with having a gun in the home.
The analysis was inspired by gun control debates in the US after mass shootings such as the Sandy Hook tragedy, and research showing that with all things being equal black Americans are more likely to be shot than whites - what they didn't factor in is that black Americans are also far more likely to shoot people than whites. The most recent figures show that there are approximately 38,000 gun related deaths in the US each year, about half of them due to suicides. Under 500 are due to 'assault' rifles or any other kind. Sociological papers claim that having a gun in the home is related to a 2.7 and 4.8 fold increase in the risk of a member of that home dying from homicide or committing suicide using a gun, respectively.
Lead author Dr. Kerry O'Brien from The University of Manchester said, "Coming from countries with strong gun control policies, and a 30-fold lower rate of gun-related homicides, we found the arguments for opposing gun control counterintuitive and somewhat illogical."On the other hand, the UK countries of Wales, Scotland and England lead the developed world in crime - they occupy the top three spots. The fact that a burglar can't die in a gun-related homicide is why there are so many home invasions there while the victims are home, and assaults are dramatically higher than America. The average person in London is photographed 300 times per day because the crime is so high.
They also correlated conservatism, anti-government sentiment, party identification and being from a southern state with opposition to gun controls, but the association between racism and the gun-related outcomes remained after accounting for these factors and other participant characteristics (age, education, income, gender).
Symbolic racism supplanted old-fashioned or overt/blatant racism which was associated with open support for race inequality and segregation under 'Jim Crow Laws', but it still captures the anti-black sentiment and traditional values that underpinned blatant racism. Symbolic racism has also been found to be related to stronger opposition to policies that may benefit blacks (e.g. welfare), and greater support for policies that seem to disadvantage blacks (e.g. longer prison sentences).
Study co-author Dr. Dermot Lynott, from Lancaster University, said, "We were initially surprised that no one had studied this issue before; however, the US government cut research funding for gun-related research over decade and a half ago, so research in this area has been somewhat suppressed."
O'Brien said, "According to a Pew Research Center report the majority of white Americans support stricter gun control, but the results of our study suggest that those who oppose gun reform tend to have a stronger racial bias, tend to be politically and ideologically conservative and from southern states, and have higher anti-government sentiment.
"The study is a first step, but there needs to be more investment in empirical research around how racial bias may influence people's policy decisions, particularly those policies that impact on the health and wellbeing of US citizens."
Citation: O’Brien K, Forrest W, Lynott D, Daly M (2013) Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLoS ONE 8(10): e77552. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077552