Abstract
We sought to examine support for gun polices by race and ethnicity, and among gun owning subgroups. We combined two waves of the National Survey of Gun Policy (January 2017 and 2019 [N=3,804]). We used chi-square tests to assess whether support for gun policies differed by race or ethnicity overall and among subgroups of gun owners. Most U.S. adults supported 17 of 21 gun-related policies. Among gun owners, Blacks supported six policies at higher levels than whites, including minimum age requirements for gun ownership and assault weapon and ammunition-related restrictions. Hispanic gun owners supported safe storage requirements at higher levels than white gun owners. While support differed by race and ethnicity for some policies, majorities of U.S. adults supported nearly all gun policies examine regardless of race. One notable exception, carrying a concealed gun on K-12 school grounds did not reach majority support among any subgroup. While tailored messaging may be appropriate in certain circumstances, it is important to highlight the similarities in support for evidence-based gun polices across racial and ethnic groups.
INTRODUCTION
Gun ownership, a characteristic influential to gun policy beliefs,1 has historically been a right predominantly exercised by white Americans.2 Until 1866, many Black residents were prohibited from owning firearms3 and, in the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras, discretionary prohibitions continued racialized barriers to ownership.4 Today, Black Americans and era-defined immigrant populations are unequally penalized for gun possession and use.5 Discriminatory policing6 and politicized messaging emphasizing urban crime contribute to racial disparities in police encounters and experiences of violence, arrest, sentencing, and imprisonment.7 In 2019, 9% of whites reported being unfairly stopped by the police, compared to 19% of Hispanics and 44% of Blacks.8 In the context of social tensions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, police brutality, and racial justice, anecdotal evidence suggests that increasing numbers of Black Americans are becoming gun owners.9
These differential experiences may translate into divergent opinions on gun policy by race and ethnicity, which may be compounded by gun ownership status. Prior research has identified differences in support for gun policies by race, but only a limited number of gun policies have been examined and differences in policy support among gun owners of varying races or ethnicities remains unstudied.10,11 This study used national public opinion data to examine support for a broad range of gun policies by racial and ethnic identity and gun ownership status.
DATA AND METHODS
Data from the National Survey of Gun Policy,1,12 fielded in January 2017 and January 2019 with the NORC AmeriSpeak Panel, was used to examine public opinion on gun policy by race and ethnicity and gun ownership. The two survey waves were combined to increase the sample size for Black and Hispanic respondents, particularly gun owners, to allow for comparisons across racial and ethnic groups. The AmeriSpeak Panel is drawn from the NORC National Frame, an address-based sample that covers 97 percent of US households. Both survey waves were administered to respondents age 18 and older online or by phone. Both surveys had high completion rates for a total sample size of 3,804 (2017: 75% and n=2,124; 2019: 80% and n=1,680). Survey weighting adjusted for known selection deviations and survey non-response to generate nationally representative samples.
We examined respondents’ support for 21 gun-related policies. Support was measured via a 5-point Likert scale ranging from strongly favor to strongly oppose. We created a dichotomous support measure comparing ‘somewhat favor’ and ‘strongly favor’ to the other options to indicate the proportion in favor of each policy. Gun ownership was determined based on answers to the following questions: “Do you happen to have in your home or garage any guns or revolvers?” and, if yes, “Do any of these guns personally belong to you?”
We calculated unadjusted support by respondent race and ethnicity and by gun ownership status for each policy within six categories: licensing and background check policies, prohibited person policies, assault weapon and ammunition policies, policies affecting gun dealers, temporary firearm removal policies, and other policies. We used chi-square tests to assess differences in support by subgroups. Additionally, we conducted a sensitivity analysis to assess whether the differences observed across racial and ethnic groups remained after controlling for demographic variables: age, education, marital status, income, gender, living in a Metropolitan Statistics Area, and political affiliation. We calculated average predicted probabilities of support within each subgroup using the observation values in our sample for all other variables. All analyses were conducted using the svy command in Stata version 14.2. This study was reviewed and approved by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Institutional Review Board.
RESULTS
A majority of white, Black, and Hispanic respondents supported 17 of 21 policies. Compared to whites, Black respondents had lower support for nine policies (Table 1). Seven policies had support gaps of greater than 10-percentage point differences including prohibitions on gun possession for serious juvenile crimes (78% support among whites vs 65% among Blacks), displaying a gun in a threatening manner (79% vs 59%), assault and battery not resulting in serious injury (56% vs 45%), carrying a concealed gun without a permit (58% vs 44%), allowing the ATF to temporarily revoke a dealer’s license (87% vs 73%), temporary firearm removal petitions by law enforcement (77% vs 66%), and carrying a concealed gun on K-12 school grounds (30% vs 13%). Compared to whites, Hispanics had higher support for temporary gun restrictions for multiple DUI/DWI convictions (54% vs 64%) and for drunk and disorderly conduct (45% vs 52%), and safe storage requirements (71% vs 77%). Hispanics had lower support than whites for gun restrictions for displaying a gun in a threatening manner (79% vs 67% ), concealed carry without a permit (58% vs 51%), allowing the ATF to temporarily revoke a dealer’s license (87% vs 81%), and mandatory minimum sentencing for knowingly selling a gun to a prohibited purchaser (77% vs 72%).
Table 1:
Percent of Respondents Who Supported 21 Gun Policies by Race/Ethnicity (N=3804)
| White (n=2,434) Favor % | Black (n=451) Favor % | Hispanic (n= 607) Favor % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| License and background check policies | |||
| Requiring a person to obtain a license from a local law enforcement agency before buying a gun to verify their identity and ensure that they are not legally prohibited from having a gun? | 76 | 77 | 78 |
| Requiring a background check system for all gun sales to make sure a purchaser is not legally prohibited from having a gun? | 89 | 82* | 88 |
| Prohibited person policies | |||
| Prohibiting a person convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile from having a gun for 10 years? | 78 | 65*** | 72 |
| Prohibiting a person under the age of 21 from having a handgun? | 63 | 68 | 66 |
| Prohibiting a person subject to a temporary domestic violence restraining order from having a gun for the duration of the order? | 83 | 74** | 79 |
| Prohibiting a person convicted of two or more DWI or DUIs in a five-year period from having a gun for five years? | 54 | 54 | 64*** |
| Prohibiting a person convicted of two or more misdemeanor crimes involving illegal drugs in a five-year period from having a gun for five years? | 66 | 60 | 71 |
| Do you favor or oppose prohibiting a person convicted of each of these crimes from having a gun for 10 years? | |||
| Public display of a gun in a threatening manner, excluding self-defense | 79 | 59*** | 67*** |
| Assault and battery that does not result in serious injury or involve a lethal weapon | 56 | 45** | 54 |
| Drunk and disorderly conduct | 45 | 46 | 52* |
| Carrying a concealed gun without a permit | 58 | 44*** | 51* |
| Assault weapon and ammunition policies | |||
| Banning the sale of military-style, semi-automatic assault weapons that are capable of shooting more than 10 rounds of ammunition without reloading? | 63 | 65 | 59 |
| Banning the sale of large-capacity ammunition clips or magazines that allow some guns to shoot more than 10 bullets before reloading? | 60 | 61 | 60 |
| Policies affecting gun dealers | |||
| Allowing cities to sue licensed gun dealers when there is strong evidence that the gun dealer’s careless sales practices allowed many criminals to obtain guns? | 75 | 69 | 76 |
| Allowing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to temporarily take away a gun dealer’s license if an audit reveals record-keeping violations and the dealer cannot account for 20 or more of his guns? | 87 | 73*** | 81* |
| Allowing the information about which gun dealers sell the most guns used in crimes to be available to the police and the public so that those gun dealers can be prioritized for greater oversight? | 73 | 66* | 69 |
| Temporary firearm removal policies | |||
| Authorizing law enforcement officers to temporarily remove guns from individuals who the officer determines pose an immediate threat of harm to self or others? | 77 | 66*** | 77 |
| Allowing family members to ask the court to temporarily remove guns from a relative who they believe is at risk of harming himself or others? | 79 | 79 | 80 |
| Other policies | |||
| Requiring a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for a person convicted of knowingly selling a gun to someone who cannot legally have a gun? | 77 | 75 | 72* |
| Requiring by law that a person lock up the guns in their home when not in use to prevent handling by children or teenagers without adult supervision? | 71 | 78* | 77* |
| Allowing a person who can legally carry a concealed gun to bring that gun onto school grounds for kindergarten through 12th grade? | 30 | 13*** | 29 |
Differences assessed using chi-square tests
Denotes significant differences in support:
p < 0.05
p < 0.01
p < 0.001
Reference category = Non-Hispanic White
Among gun owners, a majority of white, Black, and Hispanic respondents supported 14 of 21 policies (Table 2). Policies with support gaps of 10-percentage points or more between black and white gun owners (in all cases, with greater support among Blacks) included licensing gun purchasers, requiring a minimum age of 21 for handgun possession, banning the sale of assault weapons and large capacity magazines, temporary firearm removal petitions by family members, and safe storage requirements. Compared to white gun owners, Black gun owners were significantly less supportive of two policies: gun restrictions for displaying a gun in a threatening manner and carrying a concealed gun on K-12 school grounds. Hispanic gun owners supported safe storage requirements at a higher level than white gun owners. For differences between nonowners, see Supplemental Table 2.
Table 2:
Percent of Gun Owners Who Supported 21 Gun Policies by Race/Ethnicity (N=976)
| White (n=725) % | Black (n=79) % | Hispanic (n=110) % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| License and background check policies | |||
| Requiring a person to obtain a license from a local law enforcement agency before buying a gun to verify their identity and ensure that they are not legally prohibited from having a gun? | 60 | 80* | 65 |
| Requiring a background check system for all gun sales to make sure a purchaser is not legally prohibited from having a gun? | 84 | 89 | 91 |
| Prohibited person policies | |||
| Prohibiting a person convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile from having a gun for 10 years? | 72 | 79 | 70 |
| Prohibiting a person under the age of 21 from having a handgun? | 48 | 85*** | 49 |
| Prohibiting a person subject to a temporary domestic violence restraining order from having a gun for the duration of the order? | 76 | 79 | 72 |
| Prohibiting a person convicted of two or more DWI or DUIs in a five-year period from having a gun for five years? | 48 | 49 | 53 |
| Prohibiting a person convicted of two or more misdemeanor crimes involving illegal drugs in a five-year period from having a gun for five years? | 63 | 56 | 61 |
| Do you favor or oppose prohibiting a person convicted of each of these crimes from having a gun for 10 years? | |||
| Public display of a gun in a threatening manner, excluding self-defense | 75 | 55** | 67 |
| Assault and battery that does not result in serious injury or involve a lethal weapon | 44 | 37 | 47 |
| Drunk and disorderly conduct | 37 | 40 | 46 |
| Carrying a concealed gun without a permit | 46 | 35 | 41 |
| Assault weapon and ammunition policies | |||
| Banning the sale of military-style, semi-automatic assault weapons that are capable of shooting more than 10 rounds of ammunition without reloading? | 40 | 63** | 38 |
| Banning the sale of large-capacity ammunition clips or magazines that allow some guns to shoot more than 10 bullets before reloading? | 37 | 59** | 42 |
| Policies affecting gun dealers | |||
| Allowing cities to sue licensed gun dealers when there is strong evidence that the gun dealer’s careless sales practices allowed many criminals to obtain guns? | 65 | 74 | 68 |
| Allowing the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to temporarily take away a gun dealer’s license if an audit reveals record-keeping violations and the dealer cannot account for 20 or more of his guns? | 82 | 77 | 77 |
| Allowing the information about which gun dealers sell the most guns used in crimes to be available to the police and the public so that those gun dealers can be prioritized for greater oversight? | 60 | 66 | 61 |
| Temporary firearm removal policies | |||
| Authorizing law enforcement officers to temporarily remove guns from individuals who the officer determines pose an immediate threat of harm to self or others? | 68 | 64 | 65 |
| Allowing family members to ask the court to temporarily remove guns from a relative who they believe is at risk of harming himself or others? | 70 | 89*** | 74 |
| Other policies | |||
| Requiring a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for a person convicted of knowingly selling a gun to someone who cannot legally have a gun? | 72 | 82 | 61 |
| Requiring by law that a person lock up the guns in their home when not in use to prevent handling by children or teenagers without adult supervision? | 53 | 82*** | 68* |
| Allowing a person who can legally carry a concealed gun to bring that gun onto school grounds for kindergarten through 12th grade? | 47 | 20*** | 48 |
Differences assessed using chi-square tests
Denotes significant differences in support:
p < 0.05
p < 0.01
p < 0.001
Reference category = Non-Hispanic White
There were few differences between the unadjusted support and predicted probabilities of support that accounted for demographic characteristics, including political affiliation. Overall, after adjusting for demographics, Black respondents had lower probability of supporting banning the sale of large capacity magazine and allowing cities to sue gun dealers for irresponsible sales practices relative to white respondents, and there was no difference in the probability that Black respondents supported safe storage requirements. Among gun owners, after accounting for demographics, Black respondents had lower probability than white respondents of supporting prohibitions on ownership for carrying a concealed gun without a permit, and there were no differences in the probability that Black respondents supported banning the sale of assault weapons or large capacity magazines or carrying a concealed gun on K-12 school grounds. Please refer to Supplemental Tables 2-4 for predicted probabilities overall and by gun ownership.
DISCUSSION
Most gun-related policies were supported by majorities of respondents across racial and ethnic groups including among gun owning subgroups. Overall, support was lower among Blacks than whites for policies that would extend prohibitions on gun ownership such as convictions for a serious crime as a juvenile or simple assault and battery (i.e., not resulting in serious injury or involving a lethal weapon). Blacks also had significantly lower support for law enforcement-initiated firearm removal policies. These differences may be driven in part by Black Americans’ experiences of unfair treatment at the hands of police and the criminal justice system. Unequally applied laws and unfavorable interpretations of behavior have led to disparities in convictions, non-conviction felony status, and imprisonment; policy discretion and racism in policing have been shown to amplify these patterns of racial bias.6 A 2019 survey on perceptions of racial equality found that 78% of Black Americans perceived Black and white rights to be unequal, and half believed that needed changes were unlikely to be achieved.8 Prior research has demonstrated that unfair treatment in the criminal legal system is associated with lower perceptions of police legitimacy.13 Although most Black respondents favored laws to keep firearms from persons with a history of violence, their lower support for policies that restrict firearm acquisition based on less severe criminal violations may be attributable to higher rates of victimization and lack of trust in law enforcement.
Black gun owners reported higher support than their white counterparts for several policies that are traditionally less popular among gun owners (e.g., assault weapons and large capacity magazine bans). Additionally, Black gun owners had significantly higher support for requiring a minimum age of 21 for handgun possession, family-initiated firearm removal laws, and safe storage requirements suggesting this demographic group may have different perceptions of risk around firearm ownership. These differences highlight that gun owners are not a monolith. Targeted gun policy messaging that speaks to different subgroups may be more effective than messaging toward ‘gun owners’ in aggregate. While this study found that differences exist in support for gun policies across racial and ethnic groups, which may be due to differential experiences with the criminal legal system, future research should more fully explore whether perceptions of racial fairness in law enforcement influence gun policy support.
Numerous gun policies have been associated with reductions in gun-related morbidity and mortality. For example, requiring prospective gun purchasers to get a license, allowing for the temporary removal of guns from those at risk of harming themselves or others, and safe storage requirements have been associated with reductions in homicide, suicide, and unintentional gun deaths.14–19 Potential changes to the demographics of gun owners, including increases in Black gun ownership, highlight the importance of understanding similarities and differences in support for policies shown to prevent injuries and deaths across demographic groups.
These findings should be considered in the context of some limitations. Sampling biases could impact our findings; however, this threat is minimized by probability-based sampling that covers 95% or more of U.S. households.20 Sample sizes across race and gun ownership status were small so we may have lacked the power to detect additional differences across groups. Given the topic of the survey and opinions and stereotypes about gun ownership and racial and ethnic groups, social desirability bias could impact the results of our study. The use of an anonymous survey can help mitigate this threat. While we assessed for personal gun ownership, we did not collect data on the types of guns owned by respondents. Future research should examine whether public opinion on gun policy is influenced by the types of guns owned (e.g., handguns versus long guns). In creating a dichotomous variable of support, we combined the neutral and opposition responses. This could mask policies with larger proportions of neutral responses that could inform targeted message campaigns. Although we have offered some possible interpretations, we were unable to determine directly from our survey the motivations for policy support.
This study was the first to examine differences in support for gun policies by race and ethnicity and gun ownership using a national sample of U.S. adults. When crafting messages to advance discourse on gun policies, identity-based differences may be informative. However, our central finding is that there are far more similarities than differences in support for evidence-based gun polices across demographic groups.
Supplementary Material
The majority of U.S. adults, including gun owners, support many policies that would strengthen current gun laws
Targeted messaging to different subgroups of gun owners may be more effective than ‘gun owners’ in aggregate
There are far more similarities than differences in support for gun policy across subgroups
Acknowledgments
FUNDING
Funding for data collection came from the Smart Family Foundation. Julie Ward gratefully acknowledges support from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32-HD 094687). Funders had no role in the study design, statistical analyses, interpretation of data, or drafting of this article.
Footnotes
COMPETING INTERESTS
None.
Declaration of interests
☒ The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Publisher's Disclaimer: This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.
References
- 1.Barry CL, Stone EM, Crifasi CK, Vernick JS, Webster DW, McGinty EE. Trends in Americans’ Support for Gun Policies. Health Affairs. 2019. [Google Scholar]
- 2.Azrael D, Hepburn L, Hemenway D, Miller M. The stock and flow of US firearms: results from the 2015 National Firearms Survey. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences. 2017. [Google Scholar]
- 3.Winkler A. The Secret History of Guns. In. The Atlantic 2011. [Google Scholar]
- 4.Hinton E. From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America. Harvard University Press; 2016. [Google Scholar]
- 5.Granse AL. Gun Control and the Color of the Law. Law & Ineq. 2019;37:387. [Google Scholar]
- 6.Alexander M. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Tenth Anniversary Edition ed: The New Press; 2020. [Google Scholar]
- 7.Hetey RC, Eberhardt JL. The numbers don’t speak for themselves: Racial disparities and the persistence of inequality in the criminal justice system. Current Directions in Psychological Science. 2018;27(3):183–187. [Google Scholar]
- 8.Horowitz JM, Brown A, Cox C. Race in America 2019. Pew Research Center. Social & Demographic Trends; Web site. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/04/09/race-in-america-2019/. Published 2019. Accessed September 29, 2020. [Google Scholar]
- 9.Chan M. Racial Tensions in the U.S. Are Helping to Fuel a Rise in Black Gun Ownership. In. Time 2020. [Google Scholar]
- 10.Pew. Continued Bipartisan Support for Expanded Background Checks on Gun Sales - Opinoin About Gun Control, Gun Rights. Pew Research Center; August 13, 2015 2015. [Google Scholar]
- 11.Filindra A, Kaplan N. Testing Theories of Gun Policy Preferences Among Blacks, Latinos, and Whites in America*. Social Science Quarterly. 2017;98(2):413–428. [Google Scholar]
- 12.Barry CL, Webster DW, Stone E, Crifasi CK, Vernick JS, McGinty EE. Public Support for Gun Violence Prevention Policies Among Gun Owners and Non-Gun Owners in 2017. Am J Public Health. 2018:e1–e4. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 13.Rocque M. Racial disparities in the criminal justice system and perceptions of legitimacy: A theoretical linkage. Race and justice. 2011;1(3):292–315. [Google Scholar]
- 14.Rudolph KE, Stuart EA, Vernick JS, Webster DW. Association between Connecticut’s permit-to-purchase handgun law and homicides. American Journal of Public Health. 2015;105(8):e49–e54. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 15.McCourt A, Crifasi C, Stuart E, et al. Effects of Purchaser Licensing and Point-of-Sale Background Check Laws on Firearm Homicide and Suicide in Four States. American Journal of Public Health. 2020. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 16.Crifasi CK, Meyers JS, Vernick JS, Webster DW. Effects of changes in permit-to-purchase handgun laws in Connecticut and Missouri on suicide rates. Preventive medicine. 2015;79:43–49. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 17.Swanson JW, Norko MA, Lin H-J, et al. Implementation and Effectiveness of Connecticut’s Risk-Based Gun Removal Law: Does It Prevent Suicides. Law & Contemp Probs. 2017;80:179. [Google Scholar]
- 18.Wintemute GJ, Pear VA, Schleimer JP, et al. Extreme risk protection orders intended to prevent mass shootings: a case series. Annals of internal medicine. 2019;171(9):655–658. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 19.Tseng J, Nuño M, Lewis AV, Srour M, Margulies DR, Alban RF. Firearm legislation, gun violence, and mortality in children and young adults: A retrospective cohort study of 27,566 children in the USA. International Journal of Surgery. 2018;57:30–34. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- 20.Dennis MJ. Technical Overview of the AmeriSpeak Panel NORC’s Probability-Based Household Panel. https://amerispeak.norc.org/Documents/Research/AmeriSpeak%20Technical%20Overview%202019%2002%2018.pdf. Published 2020. Accessed September 25, 2020.
Associated Data
This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.