Study Finds Racism Strongly Linked With Gun Ownership For White Americans

Self-destructive psychology via a press release from the University of Manchester:

A new study has found that higher levels of racism in white Americans is strongly associated with having a gun in the home and greater opposition to gun control policies.

After accounting for numerous factors such as income, education and political ideology, researchers found that for each one point increase (on a scale from one to five) in symbolic racism 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.

Research suggest[s] that having a gun in the home is related to a 2.7 and 4.8 fold increase in the risk of a member of that home dying from homicide or suicide, respectively.

The research was led by Dr Kerry O’Brien from The University of Manchester and Monash University. Dr. O’Brien said: “US whites oppose gun control to a far greater extent than do blacks, but whites are actually more likely to kill themselves with their guns than be killed by someone else. Why would you keep them? So we decided to examine what social and psychological factors predict gun ownership.”