Social and Political Correlates of Second Amendment Sanctuaries

• In Event: Poster Session: State Politics & Conflict Processes: Violence and Contention by States and Non-State Actors
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: State Politics

Abstract

For decades, the term “sanctuary” has been used to refer to policies of states and localities (sanctuary cities) in the United States which limit local cooperation in federal immigration enforcement to varying degrees (Lash et al. 2018; Collingwood and O’Brien 2019). In recent years, the term has been used in the gun rights context to refer to states and localities that adopt resolutions declaring themselves as “Second Amendment Sanctuaries”, or “gun sanctuaries” in their effort to defy statewide and federal gun-control measures they deem unconstitutional (Field 2020; Franks 2020; Su 2021). Based on our original data collection, since 2018, around 1,000 counties have adopted Second Amendment sanctuary ordinances.



In this paper, we develop a theoretical framework for explaining the proliferation of the enactment of second amendment sanctuary ordinances at the county level. We contend that the decline in the proportion of Whites in the county and subnational levels of racial resentment would be the strongest correlates to explain why some counties adopt Second Amendment sanctuaries, while others do not. We assess our theory using an original dataset that identifies all counties based on their adoption of Second Amendment sanctuary ordinances combined with other secondary source data. To our knowledge, our study will be the first systematic inquiry into the politics of gun sanctuaries that aims to explore the facets of a new policy that has spread across counties and its broader implications for local politics.

Authors

• Mary Elizabeth Kettering, Chicago Academy for the Arts

• Burcu Kolcak, Rutgers University

• Alexandra Filindra, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Craig M. Burnett, Florida Atlantic University