This disparity suggests that the knowledge deficit model is inadequate to explain or modify gun ownership. A similar public health approach aimed at reducing gun violence should take into account how gun owners discount the risks of ownership according to cognitive biases and motivated reasoning.
For example, cognitive dissonance may lead those who already own guns to turn a blind eye to research findings about the dangers of ownership. Optimism bias, the general tendency of individuals to overestimate good outcomes and underestimate bad outcomes, can likewise make it easy to disregard dangers by externalizing them to others.
Kleck and Gertz noted that membership in street gangs and drug dealing might be important confounds of risk in case control studies, just as unsafe storage practices such as keeping a firearm loaded and unlocked may be another Kellerman et al. Other studies have found that the homicide risk associated with guns in the home is greater for women compared to men and for non-whites compared to whites Wiebe, Consequently, white men—by far the largest demographic that owns guns—might be especially likely to think of themselves as immune to the risks of gun ownership and, through confirmation bias, cherry-pick the data to support pre-existing intuitions and fuel motivated disbelief about guns.
These testable hypotheses warrant examination in future research aimed at understanding the psychology of gun ownership and crafting public health approaches to curbing gun violence. To understand the underlying motivation that drives cognitive bias, a deeper analysis of why people own guns is required.
This essay attempts to further explore the meaning of guns from a psychological perspective. Modern psychological understanding of human decision-making has moved beyond availability heuristics and cognitive biases to integrate the role of emotion and affect. For example, fear can in particular bias assessments away from rational analysis to overestimate risks, as well as to perceive negative events as unpredictable Lerner et al.
While long guns have historically been owned primarily for hunting and other recreational purposes, US surveys dating back to the s have revealed that the most frequent reason for gun ownership and more specifically handgun ownership is self-protection Cook and Ludwig, ; Azrael et al. A few studies have reported that handgun ownership is associated with past victimization, perceived risk of crime, and perceived ineffectiveness of police protection within low-income communities where these concerns may be congruent with real risks Vacha and McLaughlin, , However, gun ownership tends to be lower in urban settings and in low-income families where there might be higher rates of violence and crime Vacha and McLaughlin, Mencken and Froese likewise reported that gun owners tend to have higher incomes and greater ratings of life happiness than non-owners.
These findings suggest a mismatch between subjective fear and objective reality. It also suggests that a general fear of crime, independent of actual or even perceived individual risk, may be a powerful motivator for gun ownership for some that might track with race and political ideology.
Several authors have drawn a connection between gun ownership and racial tensions by examining the cultural symbolism and socio-political meaning of guns. Metzl noted that during the s, conservatives were uncharacteristically in favor of gun control when armed resistance was promoted by Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, and others involved in the Black Power Movement.
The men described how guns help to fulfill their identities as protectors of their families, while characterizing imagined dangers with rhetoric suggesting specific fears about black criminals. Connecting the dots, the available evidence therefore suggests that for many gun owners, fears about victimization can result in confirmation, myside, and optimism biases that not only discount the risks of ownership, but also elevate the salience of perceived benefit, however remote, as it does when one buys a lottery ticket Rogers and Webley, Attempts at objective analysis have concluded that surveys to date have defined and measured DGU inconsistently with unclear numbers of false positives and false negatives Smith, ; McDowall et al.
With no apparent consensus, motivated reasoning can pave the way to the nullification of opposing arguments in favor of personal opinions and ideological stances. For gun owners, even if it is acknowledged that on average successful DGU is much less likely than a homicide or suicide in the home, not having a gun at all translates to zero chance of self-preservation, which are intolerable odds.
The bottom line is that when gun owners believe that owning a gun will make them feel safer, little else may matter. Curiously however, there is conflicting evidence that gun ownership actually decreases fears of victimization Hauser and Kleck, ; Dowd-Arrow et al. A psychological model of the polarized gun debate in America would ideally compare those for or against gun control legislation. However, research to date has instead focused mainly on differences between gun owners and non-gun owners, which has several limitations.
Gun ownership and non-ownership are therefore dynamic states that may not reflect static ideology. With existing research heavily reliant on comparing gun owners to non-gun owners, a psychological model of gun attitudes in the US will have limited utility if it relies solely on gun owner stereotypes based on their most frequent demographic characteristics.
Just so, looking more closely at the diversity of gun owners can reveal important details beyond the kinds of stereotypes that are often used to frame political debates.
Foremost, it must be recognized that not all gun owners are conservative white men with racist attitudes. For example, those with low levels of gun empowerment were more likely to be female and to own long guns for recreational purposes such as hunting and collecting. Other research has shown that the motivations to own a gun, and the degree to which gun ownership is related to fear and the desire for self-protection, also varies according to the type of gun Stroebe et al.
Owning guns, owning specific types of guns e. A study reported that new gun owners were younger and more likely to identify as liberal than long-standing gun owners Wertz et al. Although Kalesan et al. It would also be a mistake to equate gun ownership with opposition to gun legislation reform or vice-versa.
Although some evidence supports a strong association Wolpert and Gimpel, , more recent studies suggest important exceptions to the rule. Women tend to be more likely than men to support gun control, even when they are gun owners themselves Kahan and Braman, ; Mencken and Froese, Older age 70—79 Americans likewise have some of the highest rates of gun ownership, but also the highest rates of support for gun control Pederson et al.
According to a survey, the majority of the US public also opposes carrying firearms in public spaces with most gun owners opposing public carry in schools, college campuses, places of worship, bars, and sports stadiums Wolfson et al. Despite broad public support for gun legislation reform however, it is important to recognize that the threat of gun restrictions is an important driver of gun acquisition Wallace, ; Aisch and Keller, As a result, proposals to restrict gun ownership boosted gun sales considerably under the Obama administration Depetris-Chauvin, , whereas gun companies like Remington and United Sporting Companies have since filed for bankruptcy under the Trump administration.
Developing a psychological understanding of attitudes towards guns and gun control legislation in the US that accounts for underlying emotions, motivated reasoning, and individual variation must avoid the easy trap of pathologizing gun owners and dismissing their fears as irrational.
Although the research on fear and gun ownership summarized above implies that non-gun owners are unconcerned about victimization, a closer look at individual study data reveals both small between-group differences and significant within-group heterogeneity.
For example, Stroebe et al. Fear of victimization is therefore a universal fear for gun owners and non-gun owners alike, with important differences in both quantitative and qualitative aspects of those fears. In addition, biased risk assessments have been linked to individual feelings about a specific activity. Whereas many activities in the real world have both high risk and high benefit, positive attitudes about an activity are associated with biased judgments of low risk and high benefit while negative attitudes are associated with biased judgments of high risk and low benefit Slovic et al.
For those that have positive feelings about guns and their perceived benefit, the risk of gun ownership is minimized as discussed above. However, based on findings from psychological research on fear Loewenstein et al. Consistent with this dichotomy, both calls for legislative gun reform, as well as gun purchases increase in the wake of mass shootings Wallace, ; Wozniak, , with differences primarily predicted by the relative self-serving attributional biases of gun ownership and non-ownership alike Joslyn and Haider-Markel, Psychological research has shown that fear is associated with loss of control, with risks that are unfamiliar and uncontrollable perceived as disproportionately dangerous Lerner et al.
Although mass shootings have increased in recent years, they remain extremely rare events and represent a miniscule proportion of overall gun violence. While some evidence suggests that gun owners may be more concerned about mass shootings than non-gun owners Dowd-Arrow et al.
There is little doubt that parental fears about children being victims of gun violence were particularly heightened in the wake of Columbine Altheide, and it is likely that subsequent school shootings at Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary, and Stoneman Douglas High have been especially impactful in the minds of those calling for increasing restrictions on gun ownership. However, such responses may not only be ineffective, but potentially damaging.
As with the literature on DGU, the available evidence supporting the effectiveness of specific gun laws in reducing gun violence is less than definitive Koper et al.
Crucially however, this perspective fails to consider the impact of gun control legislation on the fears of those who value guns for self-protection. In other words, gun control proposals designed to decrease fear have the opposite of their intended effect on those who view guns as symbols of personal safety, increasing rather than decreasing their fears independently of any actual effects on gun violence.
Such policies are therefore non-starters, and will remain non-starters, for the sizeable proportion of Americans who regard guns as essential for self-preservation. In this essay, it is further argued that persisting debates about the effectiveness of DGU and gun control legislation are at their heart trumped by shared concerns about personal safety, victimization, and mass shootings within a larger culture of fear, with polarized opinions about how to best mitigate those fears that are determined by the symbolic, cultural, and personal meanings of guns and gun ownership.
It likewise suggests a way forward by acknowledging both common fears and individual differences beyond the limited, binary caricature of the gun debate that is mired in endless arguments over disputed facts. For meaningful legislative change to occur, the debate must be steered away from its portrayal as two immutable sides caught between not doing anything on the one hand and enacting sweeping bans or repealing the 2nd Amendment on the other.
In reality, public attitudes towards gun control are more nuanced than that, with support or opposition to specific gun control proposals predicted by distinct psychological and cultural factors Wozniak, such that achieving consensus may prove less elusive than is generally assumed. Finally, the Dickey Amendment should be repealed so that research can inform public health interventions aimed at reducing gun violence and so that individuals can replace motivated reasoning with evidence-based decision-making about personal gun ownership and guns in society.
Aisch G, Keller J What happens after calls for new gun restrictions? Sales go up. New York Times. Accessed 19 Nov Altheide DL The Columbine shootings and the discourse of fear. Am Behav Sci — Article Google Scholar. American Psychological Association One-third of US adults say fear of mass shootings prevents them from going to certain places or events. Press release, 15 August Anglemeyer A, Horvath T, Rutherford G The accessibility of firearms and risk for suicide and homicide victimization among household members: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Ann Int Med — In Depth: Topics A to Z. In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict or kept as they are now? Next, we'd like to know how you feel about the state of the nation in each of the following areas. For each one, please say whether you are -- very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied. If you don't have enough information about a particular subject to rate it, just say so.
How about the nation's laws or policies on guns? Asked of those dissatisfied with U. Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons? Gun Ownership: in Home or on Property. Do you have a gun anywhere else on your property such as in your garage, barn, shed, or in your car or truck? Do you personally own a gun, or do the gun or guns in your household belong to another household member?
Next, I'm going to read a list of problems facing the country. For each one, please tell me if you personally worry about this problem a great deal, a fair amount, only a little or not at all? First, how much do you personally worry about the availability of guns? How worried are you that you or someone in your family will become a victim of a mass shooting -- very worried, somewhat worried, not too worried or not worried at all?
Are you for or against a law which would make it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles? Do you think there should or should not be a ban on the manufacture, possession and sale of semi-automatic guns, known as assault rifles?
Thinking about mass shootings that have occurred in the United States in recent years, from what you know or have read, how much do you think each of the following factors is to blame for the shootings -- a great deal, a fair amount, not much or not at all? How about -- Easy access to guns? How about -- Violence in movies, video games and music lyrics? How about -- The spread of extremist viewpoints on the internet? How about -- Failure of the mental health system to identify individuals who are a danger to others?
How about -- Inflammatory language from prominent politicians or political commentators? How about -- Drug use? How about -- Insufficient security at public buildings including businesses and schools? Next, I'm going to read you some things people may do because of their concern about mass shootings. For each one, please tell me if it is something you have done, something you are seriously considering, something you are not seriously considering or something you haven't even thought about.
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