The current psychology of gun attitudes in the United States is a complex subject that has yet to be fully unpacked. Among White Americans, one consistently strong yet often overlooked predictor of gun attitudes is a person’s racial attitudes toward Black Americans. Recent studies have demonstrated that White Americans who hold stronger anti-Black attitudes also report stronger opposition to gun control. For example, White Americans who blame a “lack of work ethic” for Black Americans’ relatively lower social and economic position (rather than current and past racial discrimination; Kam & Burge, 2017; Kinder & Sears, 1981; Sears & Henry, 2003) are more likely to oppose gun control, even when typical demographic factors relevant to attitudes about guns, such as political ideology and personal gun ownership, are accounted for (Filindra & Kaplan, 2016, 2017; O’Brien et al., 2013).
These previous studies document a strong link between anti-Black and pro-gun attitudes held by some White Americans. However, U.S. history demonstrates that the strength of this link may depend on whose access to guns is in question. Arguably, the most restrictive gun control laws can be found in the overtly racist U.S. antebellum and Jim Crow periods. Many of these gun laws specifically and explicitly restricted Black persons’ ability to possess and carry firearms. A more recent and salient historical example is the Mulford Act of 1967, which outlawed the open carrying of loaded firearms. The Mulford Act was signed into law by California’s Republican governor Ronald Reagan with the support of the National Rifle Association. Although it is not explicitly stated in the act, the passage of this particular gun control law was motivated by the open carrying of loaded firearms by members of the Black Panther Party who were conducting patrols in Oakland neighborhoods to protect Black residents from police brutality (Anderson, 2021; Cottrol & Diamond, 1991; Winkler, 2011).
In sum, although current research suggests that White Americans with strong anti-Black attitudes should show the greatest support for gun rights, history would suggest that their support may be tempered if they are made to think about Black gun owners also utilizing those rights. In a study recently published in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Generalopens in new window, the research team of Gerald D. Higginbotham, David O. Sears, and Lauren Goldstein examined this nuanced role of race and racism in White Americans’ current gun attitudes and policy support.
To help situate findings from previous research in this long history, the research team first investigated whether White Americans associated gun rights with White people more than they associated such rights with Black people. The expectation was that this racialization of gun rights would be more pronounced among White Americans with stronger anti-Black attitudes. To do this, the research team indirectly measured White Americans’ strength of association between race (Black Americans vs. White Americans) and words and phrases representing the categories of gun rights (e.g., “concealed carry,” “gun range”) and gun control (e.g., “waiting period,” “gun-free zone”). Overall, White participants showed that they more strongly associated White Americans with gun rights and Black Americans with gun control. As expected, this overall association was primarily driven by White participants who held strong anti-Black attitudes, because these White participants showed a pronounced mental association between gun rights and White Americans (and between gun control and Black Americans), whereas those who did not hold strong anti-Black attitudes did not.
Therefore, White Americans who hold strong anti-Black attitudes more readily think about White Americans when thinking about gun rights—rights they staunchly support. But what happens to this support when they are instead made to think about Black Americans’ increasing legal utilization of gun rights? This question is what the research team investigated across two additional experiments.
The research team tested whether learning that Black Americans were exercising their right to concealed carry (which is legal in all U.S. states) would reduce some White Americans’ support for gun rights. In both studies, half of the White participants were randomly assigned to learn that Black people were obtaining concealed carry permits at a faster rate than White people were, and the other half learned that White people were obtaining these permits at the faster rate. Then participants reported their support for gun rights both related and unrelated to concealed carry. The same pattern was observed in both studies. The experimental condition shifted support for concealed carry rights only among White participants with strong-anti Black attitudes: those who learned that Black people were utilizing their right to concealed carry at the fastest rate were less supportive of concealed carry rights compared to those who learned that White people were utilizing concealed carry at the fastest rate. This shift in support for concealed carry rights between experimental conditions was not observed among White participants who did not hold strong anti-Black attitudes. Of note in both studies, however, support for gun rights unrelated to concealed carry did not differ between experimental conditions no matter the participants’ reported level of anti-Black attitudes. This pattern of findings indicates that support shifted only among White participants with strong anti-Black attitudes and only for the gun rights Black people were described as exercising (i.e., concealed carry).
The research team began this research in 2017 after a series of high-profile news stories demonstrating that Black Americans’ gun rights were being ignored or violated (e.g., Philando Castile, Jacqueline Dixon) without the typical outrage from gun rights advocacy groups such as the National Rifle Association (Coaston, 2018; Cohen, 2017; Selk, 2017). Mirroring U.S. history, their findings add to the emerging psychological literature showing that race and racism continue to matter for White Americans’ gun attitudes and policy support (Buttrick & Mazen, 2022; Hayes et al., 2021). Given these findings, this research indicates that regardless of one’s opinions on guns in the United States, one must contend with the role of racism in gun policy broadly, in relation to both efforts to expand firearm access and efforts to restrict it.
This article is in the Basic/Experimental Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Basic/Experimental Psychology topic area.