The sacred gun: The religious and magical elements of America's gun culture

Abstract

Gun culture is properly measured by a population's emotional and symbolic attachment to guns and not by rates of gun ownership. Using data from the Baylor Religion Survey (wave 6), we find that nearly all gun owners feel that guns provide them with a physical sense of security (Gun Security), but a distinct and crucial sub-set of owners express an additional and strong attachment to their weapons (Gun Sanctity). Gun Sanctity measures the extent to which owners think their guns make them more patriotic, respected, in control, and valued by their family and community. We propose that Gun Sanctity is a form of quasi-religious or magical thinking in which an object is imbued with unseen powers. To assess this proposal, we look at the extent to which gun ownership, Gun Security, and Gun Sanctity are related to traditional religion and various forms of magical thinking, namely, (a) conspiratorialism, (b) the belief that prayer can fix financial and health problems, and (c) support for Christian Statism, a form of American theocracy. We find that Gun Sanctity is highly predictive of different forms of magical thinking but is often unrelated to more traditional religious practices and beliefs.