Outraged Women: Gun Policy and Counter-Mobilization in the US, 1980-2020

• In Event: Mobilization, Countermobilization, and Backlash in the U.S. Policy State

Abstract

Recent work has re-emphasized the important role that individuals’ group-based social identities play in structuring American political life. The nature (and even existence) of these politicized identities, however, is not always symmetrical across policy divides. Take the gun debate, for example, which often pits gun rights supporters against gun regulation supporters. While those who oppose gun control have historically been united behind a durable, NRA-driven “gun owner” social identity, no such equivalent identity has been documented among those who seek stronger regulations on firearms. This imbalance has had important consequences for collective mobilization and democratic voice, namely that gun rights supporters engage with politics at greater rates than do their adversaries on the pro-regulation side. Given these political implications, it is important to explore the sorts of dynamics that might cause these imbalances to shift over time. Building on a rich, multi-disciplinary literature on group consciousness and its mobilization into politics, we adapt and deploy an emerging theoretical framework – policy backlash (Patashnik 2019) – to understand recent shifts in gun politics. We document increased pro-regulation mobilization. This mobilization is driven by women, who discuss the gun issue in distinctive ways and emphasize how it connects to important social identities they hold. Moreover, we find that women’s mobilization is often linked to policy choices and (importantly) non-decisions, particularly within the past two decades. Our findings are based on a mixed-methods study of an original dataset containing more than 4,400 letters to the editor published over a 40-year period. This study sheds light on when, how, and why adult individuals develop politically relevant identities, focusing on how this process can be a product of backlash in response to a changing policy environment.

Authors

• Kristin Goss, Duke University

• Matthew Lacombe, Case Western Reserve University