A recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals that across all political and social groups in the United States, there is a strong preference against living near AR-15 rifle owners and neighbors who store guns outside of locked safes. This surprising consensus suggests that when it comes to immediate living environments, Americans’ views on gun control may be less divided than the polarized national debate suggests.
The research was conducted against a backdrop of increasing gun violence and polarization on gun policy in the United States. The United States has over 350 million civilian firearms and gun-related incidents, including accidents and mass shootings, have become a leading cause of death in the country. Despite political divides, the new study aimed to explore whether there’s common ground among Americans in their immediate living environments, focusing on neighborhood preferences related to gun ownership and storage.
“We lived in a highly polarized point in time. Gun rights advocates claim that guns benefit the community (e.g., ‘an armed society is a polite society’) while gun control advocates claim the opposite,” said study author Justin Lucas Sola, an assistant professor at UNC Chapel Hill in Sociology and the School of Data Science and Society.
“My coauthor, Professor Justin Pickett, and I believe that Americans, pro-gun or not, share common ideals about their day-to-day lived experience. Our question was about the tension between these two ideas, asking which is stronger: the polarization around gun ownership or a shared sense of neighborhood responsibility?”
To scientifically investigate this, the researchers conducted two experiments using a Qualtrics survey involving a diverse national sample of 2,135 adult U.S. residents. The sampling strategy was purposively designed to ensure a broad range of demographic, political, socioeconomic, and geographic representation. Approximately 35% of the participants indicated that they owned guns.
In the first experiment, the researchers employed a method known as conjoint analysis, which is widely used in social sciences to measure preferences. They presented participants with profiles of hypothetical neighbors who varied along several attributes, including whether the neighbor owned a gun and, if so, what type. Specifically, the gun ownership attribute had three levels: no gun ownership, owning a pistol, and owning an AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle that is often highlighted in debates over gun control due to its use in many high-profile mass shootings.
Participants were asked to choose between pairs of these hypothetical neighbors, with each pair presented in a table format. Each neighbor profile was also defined by other characteristics that could influence perceptions of gun owners, such as gender, race/ethnicity, political affiliation, religious beliefs, family status, and socioeconomic status. This design aimed to mimic the complexity of real-world decisions, where multiple factors are considered simultaneously.
The second experiment focused on another crucial aspect of gun ownership: storage practices. This experiment utilized a picture-based factorial vignette approach, where participants were shown a scenario involving a neighbor’s gun storage method. The vignette described a social gathering at a neighbor’s house, during which a gun was spotted in an opened drawer. The storage condition of the gun—either secure (locked and unloaded, with variations of a gun safe or a chamber lock) or insecure (unlocked and loaded)—was randomly assigned to each vignette.
Participants were asked to imagine their reaction to discovering the gun and then rate their likelihood of interacting with the neighbor again in the future. This measure was taken using a Likert scale, where responses ranged from very unlikely to very likely. The scenarios also included additional randomized factors such as the neighbor’s family type, their behavior during the event (e.g., whether they consumed alcohol or argued), and the overall enjoyability of the visit. These factors were intended to simulate the complexity of real-life interactions and see how gun storage interacts with other social cues.
The results from the first experiment revealed a marked preference against living near neighbors who own AR-15 rifles. The aversion to AR-15 owners was stronger than the aversion to owners of other types of firearms (pistols). When given a choice, the probability that a respondent would prefer to live near someone who owned an AR-15 plummeted by over 20 percentage points, indicating a strong societal preference against this type of gun ownership.
The results from the second experiment highlighted that insecure storage (guns stored unlocked and loaded) significantly decreased the likelihood of future social interactions. Respondents were substantially more averse to neighbors who practiced insecure storage compared to those who used secure methods such as gun safes or chamber locks.
“Our findings are very strong! In the social sciences, it’s rare to observe such strong effects,” Sola noted.
Across both experiments, the results consistently showed that not just specific demographic groups, but a broad cross-section of Americans, including those traditionally viewed as pro-gun (such as Republicans and gun owners), expressed a preference against living near AR-15 owners and interacting with neighbors who practice insecure gun storage.
“Even in this polarized time, Americans feel similarly about guns in their neighborhoods,” Sola told PsyPost. “We find common ground on gun policy, particularly a universal desire for neighbors that practice safe gun storage.”
These insights contribute to the ongoing national discussion about balancing gun rights with community safety. But the study’s reliance on online samples, though diverse, may not perfectly represent the entire U.S. adult population. Additionally, while the findings suggest a broad consensus against certain types of gun ownership and storage, the reasons behind these attitudes—whether they stem from perceptions of safety, characteristics of gun owners, or broader societal concerns—remain to be fully understood.
“I’m confident in our results, but I wish we had deeper insights into the mechanisms behind these results — specifically, why people are averse to AR-15s and insecurely stored guns. This study featured a randomized design, included a large, diverse sample of Americans, and our results underwent a variety of robustness tests. It was preregistered on the open science foundation (link), where we’ve posted our data and code so anyone can replicate our results.”
“We want to research the mechanisms behind these effects and policies that could encourage safe gun storage. I am happy to collaborate to support these efforts!”
The study, “Widespread, bipartisan aversion exists to neighbors owning AR-15s or storing guns insecurely,” was published April 8, 2024.