Originally Posted by
lost in melb.
From the article: ( this is why I don't argue about gun laws in the US any more)
We showed that exposure to social gun culture was robustly associated with gun ownership and to our knowledge, this is the first study to establish empirical evidence of the relation between social gun culture and gun ownership. Prior evidence has shown an association between violent and gun-related behaviours and broad cultural norms. The notion that participation in a social gun culture and gun ownership co-occurs and may be mutually reinforcing readily builds on theoretical models of culture–personality relations. This inter-relationship suggests that sociocultural environments affect how people behave and how those people adopt the beliefs, values and social behaviours that are acceptable in that community culture, The link between social gun culture and gun ownership also suggest one avenue through which modern conceptions of the primacy of gun ownership, despite the potential public health consequences, are reinforced. Although notions of protection of one’s family and property originally justified
gun ownership, gun ownership is today sustained in public consciousness much more through calls to constitutionally enshrined social values, reinforced intermittently by outrage at efforts to limit widespread gun availability. Insofar as social gun cultures may contribute to these prevailing social values, their co-occurrence with gun ownership suggests that social gun culture must be considered by potential public health intervention in the area. This analysis rests on a cross-sectional design. Therefore, we
cannot infer whether exposure to social gun culture predisposes one to gun ownership or whether the latter increases likelihood of participation in the former. However, this is not particularly germane to the observations being drawn here, suggesting simply that prudent gun policies that aim to reduce gun ownership and gun-related injury might need to actively consider the prevailing social gun culture in the USA. Future studies that aim to inform our understanding of gun ownership may fruitfully explore the determinants of a participation in social gun culture in the USA.