Under God and Under Threat: Christian Nationalism and Conspiratorial Thinking as Links between Political Orientation and Gun Ownership

Abstract

Conservative political orientation is a strong predictor of gun ownership in the United States. We explore the extent to which this relationship is mediated by two related belief systems: Christian nationalism and Right-Wing conspiratorial thinking. Drawing on nationally representative data from the sixth wave of the Baylor Religion Survey (N = 1,248), we use logistic regression and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method to analyze gun ownership, disaggregated by type of gun and reason for ownership. Christian nationalism and conspiratorial thinking underlie political effects on automatic and semi-automatic guns, handguns, and guns owned for protection, especially among non-Hispanic white respondents. Christian nationalism and conspiratorial thinking are less salient to driving political differences in long gun or recreational gun ownership. Findings elucidate the belief-based mechanisms underlying the societally important link between conservative politics and gun ownership, demonstrating how beliefs pattern who owns guns (and why) in the United States.