We presented people with a scenario in which a group is preemptively disarmed by the government. One-third of our respondents saw this story: “Earlier this month federal officers seized a large number of firearms, including handguns and assault rifles, from members of an anti-government activist group. A spokesman for the group says they are peaceful, and legally own all of the firearms seized in the raids.”
Another third saw the same story, but instead of the group in question being described ambiguously, these respondents were told that the group was “Posse Comitatus, a white anti-government activist group.” The remaining third were told that the group was the “Black Panthers, an African-American anti-government activist group.”
We then asked the respondents, “Do you think the government seizing firearms violates the group’s right to bear firearms?”
In addition, we also measured feelings toward blacks and whites by asking people to rate the groups on feeling thermometers that ranged from 0 (very cold) to 100 (very warm).
Here’s what we found
First, overall views of the government’s action did not depend on how the anti-government group was described. The same fraction of respondents — about 68 percent — said the government’s action violated the group’s rights, regardless of how that group was described.
[What political science can tell us about mass shootings]
But how the group was described did affect the way people’s racial attitudes were associated with their view of gun rights.
Among people who read about the Black Panthers, those holding warmer views toward whites than blacks were
less likely to say that taking away guns violated the group’s rights. But among people who read about Posse Comitatus, the opposite was true: Those who viewed whites more warmly were
more likely to say the group’s rights had been violated.
