The more racist a person is, the more likely he is to have a gun in his home and to oppose gun control, according to a study by researchers from Australia and the United Kingdom published in the online journal PLOS ONE.
With the spate of high profile mass killings by guns in the U.S. in recent years, the researchers took a look at gun control. Specifically, they wondered why whites in the U.S. have twice the rate of gun ownership of Blacks, and oppose gun control to a much greater extent than Blacks, but are considerably more likely to kill themselves with those guns than be killed by someone else. Since having one or more guns in the home is related to a 2.7 and 4.8-fold increase in the risk of a member of that household dying from homicide or suicide, the researchers wanted to trace the roots of whites’ vigorous opposition to gun control laws.
They found that the cause is racism.
Whites who score highest on the scale of “symbolic racism” (high levels of racial resentment) are more likely to oppose policies that appear likely to benefit Blacks, even if it is not in their self-interest to do so, researchers have found. Because whites associate Blacks with crime, particularly violent crime, whites are more likely to support policies that are perceived as being tough on crime and oppose policies that are lenient.
“Self-protection and physical safety (e.g., fear) are the most commonly cited reason for owning a gun and opposing gun control and blacks are overrepresented in the crime statistics and media portrayals of violent crime,” the researchers wrote. “Accordingly, people with higher symbolic racism may be more likely to own a gun and oppose gun control as a means of dealing (consciously or unconsciously) with abstract fears regarding blacks.”
Using data collected in phone surveys across the country in 2008 and 2009, the researchers found that for each one-point increase in symbolic racism there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a gun at home. After also accounting for having a gun in the home, the researchers found there was still a 28 percent increase in support for permits to carry concealed handguns, for every one-point increase in symbolic racism.
“The present results suggest that gun control policies may need to be implemented independent of public opinion,” the researchers wrote. “The implementation of initially unpopular public health initiatives has proven effective for other public health threats (e.g., tobacco taxation, bans on smoking in public places, seatbelt use) that initially did not have widespread public and political support, but have eventually proven popular and have led to changes in attitudes.”
Interestingly, the researchers pointed out that during the Civil Rights movement in the late 1960s, when many Black activists were exercising their right to carry loaded firearms, whites in the U.S. were vociferously calling for more gun control. For instance, California governor Ronald Reagan in 1967 signed the Mulford Act, prohibiting the carrying of loaded firearms in public. But over the past 40 years the times have changed, where 53 percent of whites now want to protect the right to own guns, whereas only 24 percent of Blacks do.
The study was conducted by Kerry O’Brien and Walter Forrest of Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; Dermot Lynott of Lancaster University in the United Kingdom; and Michael Daly of the University of Stirling in Scotland.
