Racism And Discrimination In History

Racism and discrimination has been an important issue in United States history. Racism has been used in different ways, from slavery to segregation. The issue of gun control has also been an important discussion throughout history. In the article Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions by Kerry O’Brien, Walter Forrest, Dermot Lynott, and Michael Daly, the authors conduct an experiment on the issues of racism, gun ownership, and gun control. The authors conducted a quantitative study to explore “whether racism is related to gun ownership and opposition to gun control in US whites.” (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control:

Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE, 8(10)).
There have been arguments about gun ownership and opposition to gun control.

Many people who own guns argue that “guns are sued for self-protection and safety”. (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE, 8(10). Those who are for gun control argue that the belief that “guns that are used for self-defense, protection, and safety are counterintuitive and are inhibiting the adoption of appropriate policy to improve public health”, (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE, 8(10)), thus is hurting Americans instead of helping them. The authors introduce the concept of Conservatism, which is the commitment to keep traditional values and ideas. Many Americans who believe in conservatism are right-winged and believe in the in the Crime Control Model, which values catching and punishing those that society views as

criminals.
There have also been many theoretical perspectives about racism. In society, there are different forms of racism. In the study, the authors looked at symbolic racism, which is a “subtle form of racism which is old fashioned and sees blacks as amoral and inferior to whites.” (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE, 8(10)). The authors introduced the term the anti-black affect, which was created due to the “negative stereotypes of blacks (blacks are dangerous and lazy). Blacks are also associated with crime, especially violent crimes. Due to these stereotypes, “symbolic racism is correlated with fear of crime and punitive crime policy, such as the death penalty and the three-strike imprisonment.” (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE, 8(10)).
The authors used a quantitative research method to conduct the experiment.

The authors collected data from the American National Election Study. The authors used this study to test the” relationship between racism, gun ownership, and opposition to gun control. The authors also collected other variables such as gender, age, education level, income, conservatism, location, and political identification.” (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE, 8(10)). They found that those who carry out symbolic racism have a “50% greater chance of having a gun in their home, while 28% of those who had guns in the home were in support for permits to carry guns. The relationship between racism and opposition to banning handguns in the home were reduced to non-significant after accounting for having a gun in the home.” (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE, 8(10)). Based on the data they found, the authors concluded that “symbolic racism was related to having a gun in the home and to the opposition to gun control policies in US whites.” (O'Brien, K., Forrest, W., Lynott, D., & Daly, M. (2013, October). Racism, Gun Ownership and Gun Control: Biased Attitudes in US Whites May Influence Policy Decisions. PLOS ONE,

8(10)).
I found this article to be very convincing discussing the social issue of racism and gun ownership. I thought that the authors of this article had a convincing argument about how the highest percentage for white Americans to own guns in their homes was due to the negative stereotypes of blacks (they’re dangerous) which lead to a fear of blacks and lead to many white Americans to carry guns either in their homes on with them. Even though this study is convincing in how racism and gun ownership are related, this study also had some weaknesses. In the view of symbolic racism that is carried out by white Americans, the authors only studied the relationship between racism and gun ownership and not any other parts of society such as health. This study was also contained some bias because the authors did not obtain any opinions of white Americans who own guns in their home. Some implications to improve this study is to increase the number of variables in the study. Another implication to improve this study is to reduce the use of bias in the study by using a different use of data, etc.