In studies of voter turnout and vote choice, scholars of political behavior have long noted the importance of partisanship, gender, race, age, and education level, among other factors. In The Gun Gap, Mark R. Joslyn convincingly argues that this scholarship has overlooked an important variable: gun ownership. Through systematic analysis of survey data, Joslyn demonstrates that gun ownership matters—independently of other political group variables—for a range of political attitudes and behaviors. Further, he shows that the “gun gap” in vote choice is growing and will likely remain a key factor in American politics for the foreseeable future. Presented in a clear, engaging manner accessible to academic and lay readers alike, Joslyn’s analysis sheds light on gun politics and policy and on their connection to American politics more broadly.

Joslyn gets right to the point, defining the gun gap as “differences in political behavior and attitudes between gun owners and those who do not own a gun” (p. 1). In terms of voting, gun owners reliably cast their ballots for Republicans. In the 2016 presidential election, this gap in vote choice between gun owners and non-owners reached a new high of 31 points (p. 8). Despite the growing importance of gun ownership in elections, no exit poll in 2016 asked about guns, and scholars of political behavior have yet to include gun ownership as a group variable. With this book, Joslyn starts to fill in this gap and invites other scholars to do the same.

For the most part, Joslyn is less interested in explaining why the gun gap exists—although in chapter 1, he traces the major parties’ divergence on guns and emphasizes the congruence between gun culture and Republican Party positions—and more interested in documenting its growth over time and examining its implications. Chapters 2 and 3, focusing on voter choice and voter turnout, respectively, are at the heart of this endeavor. Using the framework from Campbell and coauthors’ American Voter (1960), Joslyn tests whether gun owners are distinctive in their behaviors or beliefs and whether that distinctiveness increases with attachment to the group (p. 51). He finds that gun ownership is a strong predictor of vote choice, independent of partisanship. Joslyn similarly finds in chapter 3 that gun ownership is a modest but consistent predictor of voter turnout and political participation. He acknowledges that these findings may not be surprising, but they are nonetheless valuable because they are demonstrated empirically for the first time.

In chapters 4–7, Joslyn examines how political attitudes and policy preferences vary by gun ownership. Chapter 4 examines beliefs about gun safety, finding that gun ownership is associated with greater feelings of safety around guns and that owners of multiple guns perceive even greater personal safety. Chapter 5 examines affective orientations toward gun owners, demonstrating that personal sentiment toward gun owners is correlated with assessments of personal safety, especially for non-owners. Chapter 6 looks at estimations of the gun owner population, finding that non-owners’ policy preferences are sensitive to their beliefs about the size of the gun owner population: the larger the estimation, the greater their support for gun rights. In chapter 7, Joslyn examines public attitudes toward the death penalty, finding that gun ownership is an even stronger predictor of support than gender or race.

Although the book focuses on the necessary task of establishing foundational knowledge (much of which is also common sense), Joslyn nonetheless uncovers nuance. For instance, scholars of gun politics have long understood one key advantage enjoyed by the gun lobby: the fact that gun rights supporters reliably turn out to vote. Joslyn builds on this by demonstrating that people who own multiple guns are even more likely to vote (and to vote Republican) than those who own just one firearm. Underscoring the significance of the relationship between gun ownership and political behavior, Joslyn asks, “Is there another commercial product that has such an impact on political affairs and public policy? Unlikely” (p. 187).

It is no stretch to agree with Joslyn on this key point: he clearly shows that there is something about belonging to the category of “gun owner” that matters for politics and policy. In making this point, however, Joslyn downplays distinctions among gun owners (based on race and gender) that may be important for understanding political attitudes. When defining gun culture in chapter 1, Joslyn focuses on the “meaning and identity people derive from guns” (p. 17), emphasizing patriotism, freedom, and individualism; these are the principles used in marketing by gun manufacturers and gun rights organizations. However, there is another side to gun culture, based in white supremacy, that is less openly discussed. As noted by historians, the Second Amendment was designed in part to protect state militias against slave revolts (see David C. Williams, The Mythic Meanings of the Second Amendment, 2003). Today, racial resentment is correlated with gun ownership and opposition to gun regulations (Alexandra Filindra and Noah J. Kaplan, “Racial Resentment and Whites’ Gun Policy Preferences in Contemporary America,” Political Behavior 38 [2], 2016). Further, the meaning that people attach to guns may differ significantly between white and Black gun owners. As Jennifer Carlson noted in Citizen-Protectors (2015), people of color are disproportionately likely to be victims of gun violence and to be harassed by law enforcement (or worse). For African Americans, then, gun ownership may be both a response to inadequate police protection and a means of protest against racial profiling.

In chapter 5, Joslyn examines how attitudes toward gun owners shape perceptions of gun safety. Assuming that the term “gun owner” typically calls to mind a white male (as Joslyn suggests on pp. 131–32), this chapter primarily investigates attitudes toward white male gun owners. Although Joslyn illuminates a “fascinating and disturbing” relationship between the affect heuristic and judgements about gun safety (p. 144), one cannot help but wonder how attitudes toward female and Black gun owners influence policy attitudes. Research by Matthew Hayes, David Fortunato, and Matthew V. Hibbing (“Race-Gender Bias in White Americans’ Preferences for Gun Availability,” Journal of Public Policy, 2020) suggests that these identities matter: they find that support for gun availability varies depending on whether survey respondents are primed to consider the race and gender of gun owners. In part, the absence of a discussion of race and gender reflects data limitations; the “feeling thermometer” survey question on which Joslyn based his analysis in this chapter only asked about feelings toward gun owners generally. In this way, Joslyn’s book points to the need for more survey research investigating attitudes of and toward different types of gun owners.

Overall, Joslyn’s The Gun Gap significantly advances research on gun policy and politics, firmly establishing the importance of gun ownership in American politics and paving the way for future investigations; for instance, exploring why perceptual distortions in the size of the gun owner population are correlated with policy attitudes, Chapter 6 raises the question of whether other types of misperceptions about gun owners or about gun violence similarly shape policy beliefs. Likewise, chapter 7 examines the gun gap on the death penalty, prompting the question of whether the gun gap is present in other policy areas. By inspiring these and other questions, The Gun Gap’s value for social science exceeds its own (significant) empirical contributions.