GunsEconomically stressed white male gun owners: Emotionally attached to guns, likely to justify violence against U.S. government: Study

Published 29 November 2017

White male gun owners who have lost, or fear losing, their economic footing tend to feel morally and emotionally attached to their guns, according to a Baylor University study. This segment of the population also is most likely to say that violence against the U.S. government is sometimes justified. “This speaks to the belief in some ‘dark state’ within the government which needs fighting,” says one researcher. “What’s paradoxical is that white male gun owners in the U.S. see themselves as hyper-patriotic, but they are the first to say, ‘If the government impedes me, I have the moral and almost patriotic right to fight back.’”

White male gun owners who have lost, or fear losing, their economic footing tend to feel morally and emotionally attached to their guns, according to a Baylor University study.

This segment of the population also is most likely to say that violence against the U.S. government is sometimes justified, reported researchers F. Carson Mencken, professors of sociology in Baylor’s College of Arts & Sciences.

“This speaks to the belief in some ‘dark state’ within the government which needs fighting,” Froese said.

“What’s paradoxical is that white male gun owners in the U.S. see themselves as hyper-patriotic, but they are the first to say, ‘If the government impedes me, I have the moral and almost patriotic right to fight back.’”

In contrast, nonwhite gun owners who have faced or may be coping with financially difficult times do not place as much importance on the gun, researchers found. They also are much less likely to approve of violence against the federal government even if they feel high levels of economic stress.

“Perhaps it is because they’ve have always had economic anxiety but have developed different coping mechanisms,” Froese said.

The study is published in the journal Social Problems. It analyzes differences in how American gun owners understand the meaning of gun ownership.

“Simply owning a gun does not predict an individual will express anti-gun control opinions, but rather whether the person feels empowered by the gun,” Froese said. “The emotional and moral connection explains variation within the population of gun owners.”

Baylor says that co-authors Mencken and Froese analyzed data from the 2014 Baylor Religion Survey to develop a “gun empowerment” scale, discovering that white males under economic stress find guns morally and emotionally restorative, triggering an attraction to the “frontier gun” symbolism of freedom, heroism, power and making communities safer.

“Gun control for these owners has come to represent an attack on their masculinity, independence and moral identity,” Froese said.