Guns in the North: Assessing the Impact of Social Identity on Firearms Advocacy in Canada

Abstract

Identity is an important aspect of group politics in Canada. This article examines the impact of gun owner’s social identity on the political participation of gun owners and, thus, the success of the Canadian gun rights movement. It investigates whether Canadian gun owners are politically active, and if so, why? The article is based on an online survey of 16,880 Canadian gun owners. Cross‐tabulation, probit regression, and negative binomial regression were used to assess the impact of gun owner’s social identity on political participation. Results indicate that gun owners are avid political participants and that this can be explained by the existence of a strong gun owner’s social identity within a subset of Canadians. This has implications for our understanding of how social identities tied to serious leisure communities can impact politics.Related ArticlesCagle, M. Christine, and J. Michael Martinez. 2004. “Have Gun, Will Travel: The Dispute between the CDC and the NRA on Firearm Violence as a Public Health Problem.” Politics & Policy 32 (2): 278‐310. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2004.tb00185.xJoslyn, Mark R., and Donald P. Haider‐Markel. 2018. “Motivated Innumeracy: Estimating the Size of the Gun Owner Population and its Consequences for Opposition to Gun Restrictions.” Politics & Policy 46 (6): 827‐850. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12276Smith‐Walter, Aaron, Holly L. Peterson, Michael D. Jones, and Ashley Nicole Reynolds Marshall. 2016. “ Gun Stories: How Evidence Shapes Firearm Policy in the United States.” Politics & Policy 44 (6): 1053‐1088. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12187