Don't Take Your Guns to Town? Rural Socialization and the Long-Term Politics of Firearms

Scholars have long associated rural residency with gun ownership and conservative gun-related attitudes in the United States. However, less is known about the roots and long-term stability of this relationship. Are individuals who are raised in more rural communities more likely to own firearms even when they move away? Do individuals socialized in rural communities maintain a long-term cultural attachment to guns and distinctive firearms policy attitudes? Scholars disagree about whether current rural residency and childhood rural cultural socialization are independently related to rural gun politics. This article explores for the first time the relative roles of rural childhood socialization, contemporary rural residency, and rural cultural attachments in patterns of gun ownership and firearms policy attitudes. The authors use original survey data as well as the American National Elections Study to explore these questions. They find that individuals socialized in rural communities maintain their attachment to firearms and hold relatively more conservative firearms policy attitudes over their lifespan, even after moving away from rural areas. Rural cultural childhood socialization has an independent influence on the long-run politics of guns.