Although debates over guns and gun control have roiled the contemporary political scene, the role of religion has received only limited attention from scholars. We contribute to this literature by developing a series of theoretical arguments linking one specific facet of religion –belief in supernatural evil (i.e., the Devil/Satan, Hell, and demons)—and a range of gun policy attitudes. Relevant hypotheses are then tested using data from the 2014 Baylor Religion Survey (n = 1572). Results show that belief in supernatural evil is a robust predictor of support for policies that expand gun rights. Overall, the estimated net effects of belief in supernatural evil withstand statistical controls for a host of sociodemographic covariates, and, importantly, political ideology. Very few other aspects of religion are associated with any of these gun policy attitudes. Implications and study limitations are discussed, and promising directions for future research on religion and guns are identified.
latenightscrollin on June 16th, 2021 at 15:57 UTC »
(Actual research behind paywall)
tiddertag on June 16th, 2021 at 14:14 UTC »
I want to preface this by saying I am neither a theist or firearms enthusiast, but this strikes me as a very odd study.
I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong about documenting the obvious, but in this case it seems politically motivated.
The obvious here, which isn't quite what the study addresses directly, is that religious people (and in this case it's evident that they're talking about Christianity in particular) are more likely to be politically conservative, and politically conservative people are more likely to support policies that expand gun rights.
Typically, people that believe in 'the Devil' and demons also believe in god and angels, so they could just as well have framed it in terms of people that believe in a supernatural good are more likely to support policies that expand gun rights.
I have a hunch the researchers do not support policies that expand gun rights, and this seems like an attempt to suggest support for policies that expand gun rights are motivated by kranky beliefs.
I don't believe in the supernatural, but if it did exist and was out to get you, a gun wouldn't do you any good anyway. It seems to me if they're relying on guns rather than guardian angels or a benevolent deity for protection, maybe they aren't actually as convinced of their beliefs as they think they are.
IndigoFenix on June 16th, 2021 at 11:01 UTC »
A bipartisan two-party society will do that.
America has a huge problem with splitting its population up along the "right vs left" political spectrum, where logically the facets of human opinion SHOULD be a lot more nuanced than that.
EDIT: I wasn't expecting this comment to get so much attention. I didn't even read the article, turned out they actually accounted for that.
Also notable is that they found that very few other aspects of religion were correlated with gun policy. It's ONLY the belief in supernatural evil that was relevant.
EDIT2: Also I misused the word bipartisan. Shame on you all for upvoting such a sloppy comment.