Are gun ownership and racism linked?
White racists more likely to be gun owners: study, with my comments.
All of my responses will be in red type. Rx
Researchers have found that the more racist beliefs held by a white person, the more likely the person is to own a gun — conclusions that have rankled gun rights advocates. A team led by Kerry O’Brien, of Monash University in Australia and The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, examined white Americans’ negative perceptions about blacks and compared the rates of both gun ownership and opposition to gun control to discover the correlations.
The researchers based their conclusions on the results of a multiple-choice questionnaire that measured responses to a series of statements about attitudes toward black people. The more strongly a person agreed with a statement, the more points they accumulated.
Some excerpts of the questions that were asked:
2. Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same. (1, strongly agree; 2, somewhat agree; 3, somewhat disagree; 4, strongly disagree)…
9. How much of the racial tension that exists in the United States today do you think blacks are responsible for creating? (1, all of it; 2, most; 3, some; 4, not much at all)
11. How much discrimination against blacks do you feel there is in the United States today, limiting their chances to get ahead? (1, a lot; 2, some; 3, just a little; 4, none at all)…
16. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten more economically than they deserve. (1, strongly agree; 2, somewhat agree; 3, somewhat disagree; 4, strongly disagree)
The total points were then averaged to come up with a score between one and five that determined “symbolic racism.” Researchers found that the more points a person accumulated, the greater their chances of owning a gun and of opposing gun control.
There seems to be only one politically correct view; everything else is “racist.”
The report, published in the peer-reviewed online publication PLoS One, said that for each one-point increase “there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a gun in the home and a 28 percent increase in support for policies allowing people to carry concealed guns.”
While symbolic racism, which is a subtle but modern measure of anti-black racism, was associated with higher rates of gun ownership, researchers also attempted to identify signs of overt racism, which did not appear to have any correlation to gun ownership.
sym·bol·ic [sim-bol-ik] adjective
1. serving as a symbol of something (often followed by of ).
2. of, pertaining to, or expressed by a symbol.
3. characterized by or involving the use of symbols: a highly symbolic poem.
4. (in semantics, especially formerly) pertaining to a class of words that express only relations. Compare notional.
Seems they have added a definition tosymbolic?
“The Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale” by P. J. Henry and David O. Sears (Political Psychology, 2002, Vol. 23, pp. 253-283). “Symbolic racism (racial resentment) [is] an explicit but subtle form and measure of racism.” They stress this is not “old-fashioned or overt/blatant racism which had seen blacks as amoral and inferior”. Symbolic “racism”, if it isn’t already obvious, thus means “not racism”. It instead probably means, as you will see, “knowledge of the racial politics.” A screwy thing about the scale is that it is only eight questions, any of which may be used as “the” scale: “the scale could be shortened or lengthened as needed”.
The study used data collected through the American National Election Studies — an academically run survey of U.S. voters — but only sought to measure white respondents beliefs, since whites have been found far more likely than blacks to oppose gun control measures. A Pew Research Center study from January found that 53 percent of whites said they want to protect their rights to gun ownership while only 24 percent of blacks said the same.
Where did they get this ratio? In 2008-2009, over four thousand folks were asked if they owned a firearm. 565 said yes, 615 said no; which means three thousand people weren’t asked, or refused to answer, or whatever. They do not explain why so many people refuse to answer the question not what the racial makeup of that population was.
It’s not the first time race and opinions on gun policy have been linked, and one gun rights activist called the study’s conclusions “preposterous.” “I think the notion that someone is trying to tie gun ownership to racism is silly,” said Dave Workman, an editor at the Second Amendment Foundation’s magazine. I strongly agree with that statement, does that make me a symbolic racist (what ever that may be)?
Noting an increase in the last five years in the number of permits to allow people to carry concealed weapons, Mr. Workman said he’s seen anecdotal evidence that gun ownership is increasing among minorities, including blacks, Hispanics and women. Here he is using what is referred to as a proxy as conceal carry permits have nothing to do with the purchase of a weapon, just the right to carry in concealed. The anecdotal evidence would be that someone told him or told someone who told him that this was the case.
Others caution that, though linking the two topics in a study can result in knee-jerk outrage, the results aren’t all that surprising. Only a gun control advocate who believes only the government should have guns could have a knee-jerk outrage over any of this.
“One person can read this and say gun owners are racists — and that’s not what it says,” said John Hudak, gun policy researcher with the Brookings Institution. “It says racists are gun owners.”
Those who scored ever-so-slightly higher on the politics/”racism” scale were a tiny bit more likely to admit to strangers to owning a gun. This is not the same as saying those who scored higher on the politics/”racism” scale were a tiny bit more likely to own a gun, because gun ownership was never measured. As only a fraction of the respondents in the study had anything to say on the subject of gun ownership.
Researchers note that whites’ stronger opposition to gun control has shifted over the course of the last century. The study says that during the civil rights movement black activists exercised their right to carry guns for protection from police and extreme white factions, and that the response white people was to demand stricter gun control.
Citing results that show attitudes among white people toward guns appear to be influenced by “illogical racial biases,” the study’s authors suggest that gun-control policies might need to be implemented “independent of public opinion.” I reckon it never occurred to them that when you are attacked the cops that are only minutes away, in a large city (really!), and a gun can be pulled in just seconds, not that the crime rate has dropped dramatically in the states that have allowed concealed carry?
Racism dreadfully concerns O’Brien and most academics: “Blacks are disproportionately represented in US firearm homicides (14.6 per 100,000), and would benefit most from improved gun controls.” A racist statement if there ever was one, and an admission of outright bias as made obvious by Chacago’s attempt to keep guns out of the hands of its law abiding citizens which only leaves the lawbreakers armed on the streets.
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
When I got permission to reprint this I was told to copy and paste the below in my post, so here it is.
All of my responses will be in red type. Rx
Researchers have found that the more racist beliefs held by a white person, the more likely the person is to own a gun — conclusions that have rankled gun rights advocates. A team led by Kerry O’Brien, of Monash University in Australia and The University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, examined white Americans’ negative perceptions about blacks and compared the rates of both gun ownership and opposition to gun control to discover the correlations.
The researchers based their conclusions on the results of a multiple-choice questionnaire that measured responses to a series of statements about attitudes toward black people. The more strongly a person agreed with a statement, the more points they accumulated.
Some excerpts of the questions that were asked:
2. Irish, Italian, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same. (1, strongly agree; 2, somewhat agree; 3, somewhat disagree; 4, strongly disagree)…
9. How much of the racial tension that exists in the United States today do you think blacks are responsible for creating? (1, all of it; 2, most; 3, some; 4, not much at all)
11. How much discrimination against blacks do you feel there is in the United States today, limiting their chances to get ahead? (1, a lot; 2, some; 3, just a little; 4, none at all)…
16. Over the past few years, blacks have gotten more economically than they deserve. (1, strongly agree; 2, somewhat agree; 3, somewhat disagree; 4, strongly disagree)
The total points were then averaged to come up with a score between one and five that determined “symbolic racism.” Researchers found that the more points a person accumulated, the greater their chances of owning a gun and of opposing gun control.
There seems to be only one politically correct view; everything else is “racist.”
The report, published in the peer-reviewed online publication PLoS One, said that for each one-point increase “there was a 50 percent increase in the odds of having a gun in the home and a 28 percent increase in support for policies allowing people to carry concealed guns.”
While symbolic racism, which is a subtle but modern measure of anti-black racism, was associated with higher rates of gun ownership, researchers also attempted to identify signs of overt racism, which did not appear to have any correlation to gun ownership.
sym·bol·ic [sim-bol-ik] adjective
1. serving as a symbol of something (often followed by of ).
2. of, pertaining to, or expressed by a symbol.
3. characterized by or involving the use of symbols: a highly symbolic poem.
4. (in semantics, especially formerly) pertaining to a class of words that express only relations. Compare notional.
Seems they have added a definition tosymbolic?
“The Symbolic Racism 2000 Scale” by P. J. Henry and David O. Sears (Political Psychology, 2002, Vol. 23, pp. 253-283). “Symbolic racism (racial resentment) [is] an explicit but subtle form and measure of racism.” They stress this is not “old-fashioned or overt/blatant racism which had seen blacks as amoral and inferior”. Symbolic “racism”, if it isn’t already obvious, thus means “not racism”. It instead probably means, as you will see, “knowledge of the racial politics.” A screwy thing about the scale is that it is only eight questions, any of which may be used as “the” scale: “the scale could be shortened or lengthened as needed”.
The study used data collected through the American National Election Studies — an academically run survey of U.S. voters — but only sought to measure white respondents beliefs, since whites have been found far more likely than blacks to oppose gun control measures. A Pew Research Center study from January found that 53 percent of whites said they want to protect their rights to gun ownership while only 24 percent of blacks said the same.
Where did they get this ratio? In 2008-2009, over four thousand folks were asked if they owned a firearm. 565 said yes, 615 said no; which means three thousand people weren’t asked, or refused to answer, or whatever. They do not explain why so many people refuse to answer the question not what the racial makeup of that population was.
It’s not the first time race and opinions on gun policy have been linked, and one gun rights activist called the study’s conclusions “preposterous.” “I think the notion that someone is trying to tie gun ownership to racism is silly,” said Dave Workman, an editor at the Second Amendment Foundation’s magazine. I strongly agree with that statement, does that make me a symbolic racist (what ever that may be)?
Noting an increase in the last five years in the number of permits to allow people to carry concealed weapons, Mr. Workman said he’s seen anecdotal evidence that gun ownership is increasing among minorities, including blacks, Hispanics and women. Here he is using what is referred to as a proxy as conceal carry permits have nothing to do with the purchase of a weapon, just the right to carry in concealed. The anecdotal evidence would be that someone told him or told someone who told him that this was the case.
Others caution that, though linking the two topics in a study can result in knee-jerk outrage, the results aren’t all that surprising. Only a gun control advocate who believes only the government should have guns could have a knee-jerk outrage over any of this.
“One person can read this and say gun owners are racists — and that’s not what it says,” said John Hudak, gun policy researcher with the Brookings Institution. “It says racists are gun owners.”
Those who scored ever-so-slightly higher on the politics/”racism” scale were a tiny bit more likely to admit to strangers to owning a gun. This is not the same as saying those who scored higher on the politics/”racism” scale were a tiny bit more likely to own a gun, because gun ownership was never measured. As only a fraction of the respondents in the study had anything to say on the subject of gun ownership.
Researchers note that whites’ stronger opposition to gun control has shifted over the course of the last century. The study says that during the civil rights movement black activists exercised their right to carry guns for protection from police and extreme white factions, and that the response white people was to demand stricter gun control.
Citing results that show attitudes among white people toward guns appear to be influenced by “illogical racial biases,” the study’s authors suggest that gun-control policies might need to be implemented “independent of public opinion.” I reckon it never occurred to them that when you are attacked the cops that are only minutes away, in a large city (really!), and a gun can be pulled in just seconds, not that the crime rate has dropped dramatically in the states that have allowed concealed carry?
Racism dreadfully concerns O’Brien and most academics: “Blacks are disproportionately represented in US firearm homicides (14.6 per 100,000), and would benefit most from improved gun controls.” A racist statement if there ever was one, and an admission of outright bias as made obvious by Chacago’s attempt to keep guns out of the hands of its law abiding citizens which only leaves the lawbreakers armed on the streets.
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
When I got permission to reprint this I was told to copy and paste the below in my post, so here it is.
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