Some fear, more loathing? Threats and anxieties shaping protective gun ownership and gun carry in the U.S.

ABSTRACT

Given notable recent spikes in gun purchases in the U.S., we revisit the ‘fear and loathing’ hypothesis of firearm demand by (1) establishing how crime/victimization fears are shaped by broader economic, cultural, and racial status anxieties (those emerging from group status threats [loathing]) and (2) illustrating how both fear and loathing matter for protective gun ownership and gun carry (among owners), and openness to future protective ownership among non-owners.

Using data from a nationwide survey of adults in the U.S. (n = 2,262) collected in 2019, we find that fears of crime and victimization are often more strongly associated with status anxieties than with safety threats. Both status anxieties and victimization are associated with protective ownership and carry. Among non-owners, those higher in cultural anxiety are especially likely to be open toward future protective gun ownership. This study illustrates the multidimensional fear-guns link, wherein both status-related threats and victimization-related fears shape why individuals own guns, and how they use guns.

KEYWORDS:

• Gun ownership
• gun carry
• group threat
• fear of crime
• victimization
• status threat
• racial resentment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. U.S. firearm sales in March 2020 increased sharply, simultaneously with the first public health orders restricting social mobility and the panic buying of consumer goods that occurred across the nation. Unemployment also increased, which may further spur firearm sales (Cassino and Besen‐Cassino 2020). Subsequent monthly gun sales in 2020 remained higher than in previous years, coinciding with protests against police violence, a contentious presidential election, and culminating in an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol building. It remains unknown just how influential any one of these national events were for firearms sales; regardless, using Steidley and Kosla’s (2018) methodology of background checks to proxy gun sales, more than 20 million firearms were sold in 2020, the most on record since 1999.

Additional information

Funding

Funding support for part of this research was provided by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, College of Arts and Sciences Faculty ENHANCE Award. This research was also supported in part by the Center for Family and Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University, which has core funding from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (P2CHD050959). All opinions herein are those of the authors only.

Notes on contributors

Tara D. Warner

Tara D. Warner is an associate professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and a Research Affiliate at the Center for Family & Demographic Research, Bowling Green State University. As a sociological criminologist, she has been exploring how victimization fears and group status threats shape gun ownership, attitudes, and behaviors. Her second line of research examines social, emotional, and developmental consequences of violent victimization.

Trent Steidley

Trent Steidley was an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at the University of Denver when this article was submitted. He currently is employed by the Colorado Department of Human Services; all of his contributions to this article were completed before he transitioned from the University of Denver.