“How race colors our love for guns: race and support for gun laws.”

• In Event: Theoretical Perspectives on Gun Laws, Race, Patriarchy, and Victim-Blaming

Abstract

While support for gun restrictions are somewhat consistent over time (Gallup 2013), there are changing levels of support depending on whether or not respondents are asked about guns in general or specific forms of gun control, such as handgun laws (Gallup 2013). In addition, there is a sizeable racial divide in support for gun control laws, especially between blacks and whites (Smith TW 2001; Pew Research Center 2013). In this paper I explore white’s views of gun restrictions by administering an experimental ballot survey to a sample of students from a small university in the northeastern United States. The three ballots included a ballot with the image of a white person at a shooting range, a ballot with a black shooter at a shooting range and a ballot with no image. Results suggest that racial attitudes and racial priming of respondents with an image of a black shooter are strong predictors of gun control. This is especially true when it comes to support for handgun laws. Indeed, the association of blacks with handguns (Eberhardt et al. 2004) seems to be an important part of white’s decision making when it comes to gun restrictions in the United States.

Author

• Victor Thompson, Rider University