Why Are More Americans Buying Guns for Self-Defense?

Source: Sammy-Sander / Pixabay

A recent study by Stroebe and Leander discusses why more and more Americans report owning guns for self-protection.

Gun ownership in the United States

In most industrialized Western countries, it is not the responsibility of citizens themselves but the police and the criminal justice system to protect people from harm.

In the United States, however, many feel that they need firearms for self-defense—to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their property. To be specific, U.S. civilians own more than 393 million firearms, according to a recent estimate by The Small Arms Survey.

Why does a large segment of the society say they need guns for self-defense?

Is defensive gun ownership related to high levels of violent crime—robbery, sexual assault, rape, manslaughter, murder, etc.? This is a plausible answer, except that research suggests a significant decline in violent crimes since the 1990s.

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) data show that the “violent crime rate fell 49% between 1993 and 2022.” As an aside, the rate of property crime (e.g., larceny, motor vehicle theft, burglary) also fell by 55 percent during the same period.

If this seems counterintuitive to you, you are not alone. Indeed, a large portion of Americans believe crime has been increasing.

Interestingly, although most Americans believe crime is up nationally, they do not think crime is up in their own community.

So, the perception of rising crime is likely not based on personal experience. Perhaps it is shaped by other factors—for instance, newspaper articles, television programs, and social media.

A model of defensive gun ownership

Leander and Stroebe propose that defensive gun ownership is a response to the perception of threat—specifically, to two types of threats.

The first one, a specific threat, is the perceived lifetime risk of being assaulted. This is the subjective likelihood that one will experience a violent crime (e.g., mugging, home invasion) in their lifetime.

The second, a diffuse threat, is the assumption that the world is a dangerous place. Belief in a dangerous world often goes hand in hand with prejudice against outgroups.

Note, members of the ingroup are fellow gun owners, most of whom tend to be men, white, politically conservative, Republican-leaning, and those who hold the same prejudices. A considerable number of Trump supporters who hold anti-immigrant attitudes, for instance, would fall into this category.

Furthermore, gun ownership and racism are both associated with right-wing authoritarianism. Right-wing authoritarianism involves unquestioning deference to authority, acceptance of established social conventions, and aggression toward minorities and other outsiders. To learn more, see my post.

Societal changes and a growing need for self-protection

Let us return to the question of why an increasing number of Americans feel unsafe, despite the declining crime rate. Here are three potential explanations.

One, white Americans could be concerned about losing their majority status in the United States.

To understand the importance of majority status, allow me to briefly discuss social identity theory.

Social identity theory suggests individuals define who they are by identifying with valued ingroups and positively differentiating themselves from outgroups. Doing so helps them meet psychological needs such as belonging and self-esteem.

Being the majority is one way we positively differentiate ourselves from members of other groups. Therefore, losing the majority status may increase a sense of powerlessness and even victimhood.

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In the case of white Americans, this sense of vulnerability may encourage both gun ownership and prejudice toward immigrants and religious and racial minorities. In rare cases, this prejudice would take the form of overt racism. More often, however, it would be indirect, such as the endorsement of conspiracy theories about racial, ethnic, and religious groups replacing white people (e.g., the great replacement theory).

A second factor contributing to heightened feelings of insecurity is the combined effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the co-occurring increase in gun violence, which may have convinced people who did not own firearms that they needed guns for self-protection. Some research supports this hypothesis.

A third factor involves changes in gun advertisements. Only in recent decades has self-defense become a dominant theme of gun advertising. Though protecting oneself has always been part of the gun culture, recreational uses (hunting, sport shooting) received more emphasis in the past.

Source: Sammy-Sander / Pixabay

Takeaway

The initial question posed in this post was this: Why do Americans think they need guns to protect themselves?

As noted, the need for firearms for self-protection may be caused by two types of alarming assumptions: the belief that one has a high risk of being assaulted and the assumption that the world is a dangerous place filled with unpredictable or malicious groups of people.

A second question is this: Why has the number of Americans who own guns for self-defense increased?

This is harder to answer because data show violent crime has been declining in recent years. In other words, despite experiencing less crime, Americans feel the world has actually become a more dangerous place than it used to be.

This counterintuitive finding may be explained by one or more of the following factors:

• The growing popularity of conspiracy theories: The great replacement theory, for example, refers to claims that native-born white Americans are being replaced (by people of color and immigrants) and losing their culture and identity.
• The COVID-19 pandemic: Facing a highly contagious new disease, many Americans felt unprepared and unable to cope. Even now, a large portion of the population continues to feel more vulnerable than they did before COVID-19 spread to the United States.
• Changes in gun advertising: Americans are exposed to a larger number of advertisements that emphasize self-defense as the primary reason for owning guns.