RYOT
A new study published in PLoS One and lead by Dr. Kerry O’Brien from the University of Manchester ties gun ownership and opposition to stricter gun control policies to symbolic racism in white Americans.
Symbolic racism, also considered “modern” racism, is described as a less blatant form of prejudice embraced through the approval of certain social policies designed to disadvantage blacks in the United States. Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, this form of racism has replaced old fashioned hate like the approval of Jim Crow Laws with stringent conservative policies like the opposition to social safety nets such as welfare.
Often these policies are easily rationalized in the name of fiscal responsibility or rights (e.g. gun ownership). Individuals who hold symbolically racist beliefs can feel that they themselves are not racist, or even that racial prejudice no longer exists.
After accounting for income, age, location, political ideology, education and gender, researchers discovered that for each point increase in symbolic racism that support of gun-friendly policy increased significantly. For each one-point increase on the study’s five-point symbolic racism scale, the chance of owning a gun increased 50 percent. At the same time, support for concealed carry policy increased 28 percent in addition to a 27-percent increase in opposition to policy prohibiting handguns in households.
Let me be the first to say that "symbolic racism" is pretty funny. Surely they could have come up with a better term than that.
