Study finds racism, gun ownership linked in U.S.

U.S. residents who own guns are more likely to have racist attitudes than are people without firearms at home, according to a study by researchers in Australia and the United Kingdom.

The study, published Oct. 31 in the peer-reviewed research journal PLOS ONE, was done by Kerry O'Brien and Walter Forrest, both behavioral scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia; Dermot Lynott, a psychologist at Lancaster University in Lancaster, England; and Michael Daly, Institute of Sociomanagement, Stirling University in Stirling, Scotland.

Respondents, who were recruited through the American National Election Studies, a collaboration of Stanford University and the University of Michigan, were asked to complete an online survey each month from January 2008 to September 2009. They were paid $10 a month to take part. Those without online access were provided with Internet service for the study's duration.

Based upon the participants' answers, researchers determined that "symbolic" racism, or racial resentment, was significantly related to having a gun in the home, after adjusting for other variables.

Specifically, for each 1 point increase in symbolic racism (on a scale from one to five), there was a 50% greater chance of having a gun in the home and a 28% increase in the odds of supporting permits to carry concealed handguns.

The authors describe symbolic racism as a belief structure underpinned by an anti-black feeling established in younger years through exposure to negative stereotypes such as "blacks are dangerous."

"This anti-black affect is not necessarily conscious or deliberate but may be felt as fear, anger, unease and hostility towards blacks," according to the researchers.

"The symbolic component reflects the abstract view of blacks as a collective rather than as individuals, as well as its basis in abstract white moralistic reasoning and traditions," the authors state.

According to the study, the rate of gun ownership in the United States is twice as high among whites as blacks. Also, the authors state, U.S. whites oppose gun control to a much greater extent than blacks do but are considerably more likely to kill themselves with guns than to be killed by others.

The rate of firearm homicides in the United States (3.6 per 100,000) is more than seven times the rates in similar nations (e.g., Canada, 0.5; United Kingdom, 0.1; and Australia, 0.1), the authors report.

In 2011, there were 32,163 firearm-related deaths in the United States, with 11,101 homicides (69.5% of all homicides), and 19,776 suicides (51.6% of all suicides), the researchers state.