Academic Researchers Claim Gun Rights Advocates Are Racist
Researchers from the University of Illinois at Chicago have published a study that claims “racially biased conservative Whites” support the Second Amendment right to bear arms because they identify gun ownership with good citizenship and suggests mass shootings “may be a symptom of the country’s enduring legacy of racism.”
This analysis was published in the Washington Post by associate professor of political science Alexandra Filindra, Ph.D. student in political science Beyza Buyuker, and clinical assistant professor of political science Noah J. Kaplan of the University of Illinois at Chicago. They published their findings in the Post after two mass shootings occurred within one week of each other in Georgia and Colorado and amid a renewed national debate over gun control.
These researchers wanted to find out why “gun rights supporters are highly politically organized and unwavering on their views, while gun regulation supporters are not.”
“Our research found a reason for this difference: racial differences in rates of gun ownership and beliefs about guns,” the researchers wrote. “White Americans are far more likely than any other group to own firearms and oppose gun regulations. To them, guns are potent political symbols. For many people, especially White Americans, guns are integral to who they are as citizens and what it means to be a good citizen.”
On the other hand, gun control advocates “tend to think about guns in terms of preventing violence and the harms that guns can inflict,” the researchers state. Because “racially conservative Whites” — who are defined as scoring high on measures of anti-black prejudice — associate gun ownership with good citizenship, they “interpret attempts to restrict access to guns not as an effort to prevent gun violence but as an attack on their ability to express their patriotism.” (Read more from “Academic Researchers Claim Gun Rights Advocates Are Racist” HERE)
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