Locked, Stocked, and Charmin: Sources of White Americans’ Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an unprecedented number of people purchasing firearms/ammunition. However, this was not the only way Americans responded to the pandemic: large swaths of the public also stayed at home and stockpiled goods. Twelve months later, as the pandemic raged, these coping mechanisms were still present as Americans continued to buy guns/ammunition, limit social interactions, and hoard supplies. Using two nationwide surveys conducted one year apart, we examine the extent and sources of gun/ammunition purchasing compared to staying home and panic buying during this unique moment in American history. Results from both surveys indicate that the factors that led to these divergent coping mechanisms vary. Both at the beginning of the pandemic and one year later, the likelihood of purchasing a firearm/ammunition was associated low self-control and White nationalism. Conversely, fear of the virus was associated with people staying home and amassing supplies.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• gun purchasing
• stay-at-home orders
• panic buying
• stockpiling
• White nationalism
• self-control
• fear

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15564886.2023.2183917.

Notes

1. Of the eight states without statewide stay-at-home orders, mayors in three of those states issued city-wide stay-at-home orders (Mervosh et al., 2020).

2. However, using more robust models controlling for political values and childhood socialization, Schutten et al. (2021) recently have called into question the strength of the relationship between racial resentment and gun ownership.

3. America will be considered a majority-minority nation when citizens of color outnumber non-Hispanic White citizens.

4. Kaufmann (2019) favors the term “ethno-traditional nationalism” to indicate that this in-group attitude could be applied to other races and ethnicities.

5. Other values or ideals of White nationalism include the limiting of immigration so that immigrants can “assimilate into the ethnic majority, maintaining the white ethno-tradition” (Kaufmann, 2019, p. 11), the belief that the country was and is great because of the traditional European heritage (Cullen et al., 2021), and that cultural shifts or pressures to change ways of life to benefit out-group members represent a threat to their traditional views and way of life (Cullen et al., 2021; Hochschild, 2016; Jardina, 2019a, 2019b).

6. Both surveys were self-funded by the research team.

7. Concerns about the quality of MTurk data have been raised regarding non-naive respondents (Chandler et al., 2014), respondent carelessness (Aruguete et al., 2019), and bots (Moss et al., 2021; for more see, Chmielewski & Kucker, 2020; Hauser et al., 2019).

8. This is standard practice in the field when examining White nationalism and White in- or out-group attitudes (see, e.g., Jardina, 2019a, 2019b; Kaufmann, 2019).

9. Based on prior research, our sample sizes are large enough to produce sufficiently powered estimates (Long, 1997; Peduzzi et al., 1996).

10. Respondents reporting they had purchased a handgun, long gun, or ammunition were provided with a follow-up question of “Why did you purchase a firearm (ammunition)? Please rate your agreement or disagreement with each of these possible reasons.” One reason is: “In response to COVID-19 and the risk it may pose to me or my family” (Response options of Strongly agree to Strongly disagree on a five-point Likert type scale). Respondents could have purchased a firearm or ammunition for a multitude of overlapping reasons, which is evidenced in the strong correlations between endorsed reasons in our survey (e.g., r = .433 for COVID and “the concern for my or my family’s safety after the social unrest following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020”; r = .658 between COVID and “The concern for my or my family’s safety after the social unrest at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6^th, 2021”). When this sample is restricted to White Americans (n = 47), the analyses were underpowered. Nonetheless, results for this sub-sample are reported in footnote 13.

11. We also conducted supplemental analyses using the three categories rather than dichotomizing the variable. The results are discussed in footnote 15 and provided in the online supplemental material.

12. Respondents were asked to identify their religious affiliation (if any) through the question “What is your present religion, if any?,” with response options of “Protestant,” “Roman Catholic,” “Mormon,” “Eastern or Greek Orthodox,” “Jewish,” “Muslim,” “Buddhist,” “Hindu,” “Atheist,” “Agnostic,” “Nothing in particular,” or “Something else.” Respondents endorsing a religious affiliation (i.e., “Protestant,” “Roman Catholic,” “Mormon,” “Eastern or Greek Orthodox,” “Jewish,” “Muslim,” “Buddhist,” “Hindu,” “Something else”) were coded as 1 “Religious,” with all others coded as 0.

13. Analyses of a subsample (n = 47) of White respondents that indicated they specifically purchased a gun because of COVID-19 (strongly agree or agree) were conducted with results holding for the impact of White nationalism and low self-control, but not for rightward political views, education, and COVID-19 news awareness. These differences in findings are likely due to the underpowered supplemental analysis. As such, results of this supplemental analysis should be interpreted with caution. The results of these analyses are available upon request.

14. Results are available upon request.

15. Multinomial modeling of this variable was also explored and presented in the online supplemental material. Specifically, the analyses examined people who stayed at home for the entirety of the pandemic, those who initially stayed home but had resumed activities during the pandemic, and those who never stayed home during the pandemic. Substantively similar results were found. Those who initially stayed home but resumed activities (compared to “never stayed home”), were no different in racial resentment, income or religious affiliation. However, compared to those who never stayed home, this group had significantly less COVID-19 news awareness. Differences between those who “always stayed home” versus “never stayed home” remained largely similar, with racial resentment, education, income, and religious retaining statistical significance and direction. The effects of political views and age became non-significant, while low self-control and altruistic fear became significant (still in the same direction of the coefficients presented).

16. This is comparable to the results of a NORC study indicating 18% of American households bought a firearms “since the start of the pandemic (March 2020–2022)” (E. Young, 2022).

17. Respondents in 2021 who purchased a firearm or ammunition were asked how much they agreed or disagreed that their purchase was because of “The concern for my or my family’s safety after the social unrest following the death of George Floyd in the summer of 2020” and “The concern for my or my family’s safety after the social unrest at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6^th, 2021.” Due to small number of respondents who purchased a firearm (n = 69) or ammunition (n = 116) as well as the capacity for respondents to identify multiple causes for their purchases, analyses were limited. Still, 47.8% of respondents agreed or strongly agreed their firearm purchase was a result of the unrest following the death of George Floyd, with 44.8% agreeing or strongly agreeing this was a reason they purchased ammunition in 2021. Likewise, 44.9% or respondents agreed or strongly agreed their firearm purchase was brought on by the unrest on January 6^th, 2021, with 33.6% agreeing or strongly agreeing this was a cause of their ammunition purchase. To attempt to control for these effects in our full-sample models, we used news awareness of these events as a proxy, asking respondents how closely they followed the news about “the social unrest following the death of George Floyd” and “the events that happened at the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6^th, 2021.” When entered into our models in Table 2, neither of these variables were statistically significant nor did they alter the substantive findings provided in Table 2. These results are available upon request of the first author.