New study shows US ‘gun owners are more politically active’
A new study stated gun owners are more likely to be politically active than those not owning firearms or calling for gun control reform in the US.
Political science researchers at the University of Kansas concluded this could be part of the reason gun control reform legislation has been slow to take hold in the US, despite numerous mass shootings from the 2012 tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, to the deaths of 58 people at a country musical festival in Las Vegas in 2017.
Graduate student Abbie Vetger said in a statement about the “Motivated Voices: Gun Ownership and the Propensity for Political Participation” study that gun owners are a “very strong political group who hold a lot of weight and hold a lot of influence despite being a minority in American politics”.
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Delineating gun owners as a distinct social group – as opposed to only examining members of the powerful lobbying and membership group like the National Rifle Association (NRA) – was a key factor in reaching the study’s conclusions.
“Only one in five gun owners belong to the NRA, so we think there is something else going on than just the NRA when it comes to mobilisation,” Ms Vetger said…