While guns go hand in hand with “God and country” in American popular culture, leading to a stereotype that gun owners tend to be more religious, a new study finds that the subset of gun owners with the strongest pro-gun policy views are actually the opposite. This group tends to be staunchly in favor of gun rights and to strongly oppose gun control measures, such as bans on handguns, semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips. Identifying why this variation among gun owners exists could inform our understanding about how different types of gun owners perceive gun policy and gun violence. Despite the fact that religion and gun rights are lumped into conservative politics, in the study, religious gun owners were less likely to feel that their guns were an empowering object that gave them a sense of meaning. In comparison, disenfranchised gun owners who were people of color felt less empowered by owning a firearm.

Source: Huffington Post December 01, 2017 00:33 UTC