{"id":1625218,"date":"2022-08-29T08:02:41","date_gmt":"2022-08-29T12:02:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1625218"},"modified":"2022-08-29T08:03:05","modified_gmt":"2022-08-29T12:03:05","slug":"gun-owners-are-racist-according-to-academics-using-bad-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/gun-owners-are-racist-according-to-academics-using-bad-science\/","title":{"rendered":"Gun Owners Are Racist, According To Academics Using Bad Science \u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fgun-owners-are-racist-according-to-academics-using-bad-science%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1625218&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>White people own guns \u2014 and oppose gun-control legislation \u2014 because they are racist and fear black people. Two new studies advance this dangerous narrative building among our academic elites. While such rhetoric is perhaps unsurprising among political\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/thehill.com\/opinion\/3520804-juan-williams-how-the-gop-stokes-white-fear-of-black-gun-violence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">pundits<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.oprahdaily.com\/entertainment\/books\/a40474135\/anti-blackness-gun-control-second-amendment\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">celebrities<\/a>, otherwise serious academics are now ascribing racist motives to gun ownership and opposition to gun control. These studies are not only based on a slew of bigoted assumptions, but also bad science.<\/p>\n<p>The University of Wisconsin recently\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/news.wisc.edu\/historical-rates-of-enslavement-predict-modern-rates-of-american-gun-ownership\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">promoted<\/a>\u00a0a new\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nickbuttrick.com\/files\/PNAN2022Preprint.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">study<\/a>\u00a0contending that in U.S. counties where black people were enslaved in 1860, gun ownership is higher today. In fact, gun ownership, they say, is correlated to the number of slaves formerly in each county. To support this more-slaves-means-more-guns theory, the authors construct a historical narrative that whites feared newly freed slaves, bought guns for self-defense, and then this fear somehow trickled down over 160 years.<\/p>\n<p>But interestingly enough, just last month, National Public Radio ran a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/07\/18\/1112095634\/black-people-are-the-fastest-growing-group-of-gun-owners-in-the-u-s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">story<\/a>\u00a0on how black people are the fastest growing group of gun owners. If gun ownership is a product of white people being racist, then this is quite curious.<\/p>\n<p>The University of Wisconsin study suffers from a series of flaws, even apart from its poisonous premise that white people believe or feel certain things because they are white. You\u2019d never say the same about other races, and we shouldn\u2019t give a pass to academics who traffic in the same type of racism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<h2>Alternative Explanations<\/h2>\n<p>In any correlational study like this, one must be concerned about the potential for alternative explanations. And a study with the punchline \u201cbecause slavery\u201d leaves a lot of room for alternatives.\u00a0For example, the extent of slavery in southern U.S. counties was far heavier in areas of the south that remain rural to this day.\u00a0The so-called \u201cBlack Belt\u201d of southern agriculture that stretched across Georgia to Mississippi remains heavily agrarian, rural, and impoverished today relative to other parts of the region that have been absorbed into growing metropolises like Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville. In these regions, the wide-scale hunting of deer, quail, and even wild boar remains more prominent and may explain higher levels of gun ownership, yet this fact remains unaccounted for in the study.<\/p>\n<p>Next, the authors peddle a sort of \u201cFacebook-friend racism theory\u201d that is, charitably speaking, laughable. The authors propose that counties that are more socially connected with southern counties have higher rates of gun ownership. Apparently, having a southern Facebook friend makes you afraid of black people. Again, several alternative explanations come to mind. Most importantly, one would expect non-slave-holding counties located near slave-holding counties to have both social ties and a similar culture of gun ownership. The paper did not account for this.\u00a0Additionally, with the increasing mobility of Americans, it is unclear that ties to someone who lives in an area that once had slaves bear any relationship to that area\u2019s slave-owning past. Why would it? A study unnecessarily laden with such racial biases, paired with shaky scientific foundations, furthers the notion that this academic research is less about finding the truth than about bolstering some woke narrative.<\/p>\n<p>A few days after the release of the slavery-predicts-gun-ownership study, the American Psychological Association (APA)\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.apa.org\/news\/press\/releases\/2022\/08\/racism-gun-rights\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">released<\/a>\u00a0another study contending that whites support gun rights because they are racist, and when whites oppose gun rights, that\u2019s also racist.<\/p>\n<h2>Flawed Determination of Racism<\/h2>\n<p>In setting up its key findings about \u201cracist\u201d white Americans, the APA study uses what\u2019s known as an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to identify whether study participants harbored racial resentment. IATs attempt to measure biases that exist below the surface through the matching of terms, phrases, or pictures. In this case, for example, the study had participants pair gun rights terms (e.g. \u201chunting\u201d) or gun-control phrases (e.g. \u201cgun free zone\u201d) with white faces and black faces. Also, the study had participants measure their agreement with certain statements such as \u201cIrish, Italians, Jewish, and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Black people should do the same without any special favors.\u201d Apparently, how a participant matched faces, or agreed with a particular statement (on a scale of 1 to 5), allowed the study authors to determine whether a participant was racist.<\/p>\n<p>While IATs once represented an intriguing method of uncovering unvoiced racism, the technique has come under increased criticism in recent years. In particular, it is largely accepted that a single IAT is\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/platform\/amp\/identities\/2017\/3\/7\/14637626\/implicit-association-test-racism\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">not sufficient<\/a>\u00a0to uncover racial bias, even by those who created the test. Manhattan Institute Fellow\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.city-journal.org\/html\/are-we-all-unconscious-racists-15487.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Heather MacDonald<\/a>\u00a0has extensively catalogued the serious academic criticisms of IATs.<\/p>\n<p>There are many valid policy and legal arguments opposing all sorts of gun-control proposals. But academics are attempting to short circuit the debate by simply labeling opponents as \u201cracist\u201d and gun owners as harboring \u201cwhite fear.\u201d Discrediting opponents with ad hominem attacks like \u201cracist\u201d is offensive and wrongheaded on its own. But employing \u201cscience\u201d based on discredited theories or faulty assumptions is a dastardly attempt to foment racial divisions.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>\n  Dan Lennington is deputy counsel, and Dr. Will Flanders is research director, at the Wisconsin Institute for Law &#038; Liberty.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\">\n    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" \/>    <\/p>\n<p>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p>    <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\" class=\"btn btn-on-white\">Subscribe<\/a>  <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>White people own guns \u2014 and oppose gun-control legislation \u2014 because they are racist and fear black people. Two new studies advance this dangerous narrative building among our academic elites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1306,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1625218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1306"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1625218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1625218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1625218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1625218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1625218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}