Rural Place Identity and Police Views of Gun Control

• In Event: 157 - Regular Session. Rural Contexts as Spaces of Inequality, Power, and Identity

Abstract

We draw on narratives from twenty semi-structured interviews with police officers from a rural sheriff’s department to present what we believe is the first in-depth examination of U.S. rural officers’ views on gun control. We find that officers possess complex views about gun control that relate to their difficulty negotiating multiple identities as both gun-oriented rural citizens and safety-oriented crime control agents. Specifically, we observed that rural police officers: 1) embrace a rural identity that requires a categorical rejection of gun control and support of gun rights; 2) report that their police work experiences have caused them to embrace their police identity and to distance themselves from some gun-related aspects of rural identity (e.g., they have lost interest in guns over time and have increasingly dissociated from gun-enthusiast peers); and 3) have learned to incorporate aspects of both identities into their views on gun control, universally advocating for some specific gun control measures in the name of community safety, but rejecting others as part of rural ideological views about personal freedom. We conclude by discussing the research and policy implications of our findings and suggest that policy makers must better appreciate the nuances and culture of rural places in order to gain rural citizens’ and rural police officers’ support for gun control legislation.

Authors

• Rachael A. Woldoff, West Virginia University

• Angela Sycafoose, West Virginia University

• Robert C. Litchfield, Washington & Jefferson College