The Changing Ideological Politics of U.S. State Firearms Regulation

Abstract

Are the components of policy ideology in the American states fixed, or do they change over time? We document a change in the ideological loading and internal consistency of state firearms laws. While state policy liberalism has long correlated positively with restrictive gun regulation, this relationship strengthened over the 1986‐2016 period. Moreover, states' gun policy regimes have become more internally consistent since 1986, and newly salient issues, such as concealed‐carry laws and assault weapons bans, have been enfolded into the existing dimension of regulatory restrictiveness. This process also corresponds to a shift in the geographic bases of the Republican and Democratic Parties toward nonurban and urban areas, respectively. The changes in gun policy patterns across states reflect dynamic representation of voter ideology. The results suggest that certain modeling assumptions used to generate cardinal state policy ideology scores in prior research ought to be revised.Related ArticlesJoslyn, 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.12187Tucker, Justin A., James W. Stoutenborough, and R. Matthew Beverlin. 2012. “Geographic Proximity in the Diffusion of Concealed Weapons Permit Laws.” Politics & Policy 40 (6): 1081‐1105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00399.x