Sunday, November 3, 2013

Racism Linked to Gun Ownership and Gun Rights


A new study published in PLoS One and lead by Dr. Kerry O’Brien from the University of Manchester ties gun ownership and opposition to stricter gun control policies to symbolic racism in white Americans.

Symbolic racism, also considered “modern” racism, is described as a less blatant form of prejudice embraced through the approval of certain social policies designed to disadvantage blacks in the United States. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, this form of racism has replaced old fashioned hate like the approval of Jim Crow Laws with stringent conservative policies like the opposition to social safety nets such as welfare.

Often these policies are easily rationalized in the name of fiscal responsibility or rights (e.g. gun ownership). Individuals who hold symbolically racist beliefs can feel that they themselves are not racist, or even that racial prejudice no longer exists.

After accounting for income, age, location, political ideology, education and gender, researchers discovered that for each point increase in symbolic racism that support of gun-friendly policy increased significantly. For each one-point increase on the study’s five-point symbolic racism scale, the chance of owning a gun increased 50 percent. At the same time, support for concealed carry policy increased 28 percent in addition to a 27-percent increase in opposition to policy prohibiting handguns in households.

Let me be the first to say that "symbolic racism" is pretty funny. Surely they could have come up with a better term than that.

17 comments:

  1. I have a better term for the whole article: bullshit. The authors of the study used where a person lives, the person's political philosophy, and other such irrelevant pieces of information to decide how racist that person is and then asked about whether the person owns a gun or opposes gun control. The irony here is that the study is itself an example of prejudice--namely the belief that favoring smaller and restrained government is racist.

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  2. Buying a gun turns you into a racist?

    More proof that these studies are written by lunatics.

    orlin sellers

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  3. " the person's political philosophy, and other such irrelevant pieces of information to decide how racist that person is"

    It's not irrelevant if a persons political philosophy is biased against minorities, like supporting voting laws that subdue black voting.

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    1. There is nothing fundamentally racist about being Republican or conservative. Supporting self-sufficiency and opposing free lunches isn't racist.

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    2. And I never said anything like that, but thanks for playing.

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    3. You said, "It's not irrelevant if a persons [sic] political philosophy is biased against minorities..." No, you don't get to weasel out of what you meant.

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    4. You are the one who said:
      "to decide how racist that person is"
      I pointed out that those who vote for laws that deny and subdue minority voting certainly show a bias, and yes, we certainly can call that racism. I never said Republicans are inherently racists. Do all Republicans support voting laws whose consequence is to deter minority voting?

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    5. The intent of voter suppression laws is to win elections. I highly doubt they care the color of the skin of the voter, but rather whom they are voting for is all that matters.

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    6. That's a claim, not fact. You should learn the difference.

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    7. Sorry, but it is a fact that those laws unequally effect minority voters. Read the facts.

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    8. Even if true, Anonymous, that doesn't make it racist.

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    9. It does when the facts are presented, it is effecting minorities more tha any other segment of society, and yet they "don't care" and continue to push discriminatory legislation.

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  4. In other news--water is wet.

    Gunloons hate science.

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    1. Jade, perhaps you'd care to be specific? Only an abstract was available, but the methodology seems to involve deciding that being conservative is racist at its base.

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  5. Overt racism passes laws restricting the rights of minorities to include restrictions for voting, school choice, and possession of firearms for self defense against those who would commit violence because of their race.
    Symbolic racists pass laws making it easier for minorities to possess firearms for self defense against those who would commit violence against them. Ah, I see their plan now......

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