Firearms, families, and financial distress: Economic instability and increased gun desire

Abstract The United States is a global leader in estimated rates of civilian gun ownership, and over the past few years—as the country grappled with a struggling economy exacerbated by a global pandemic—gun‐buying surged. We argue that the COVID‐19 pandemic's economic impact has implications for gun purchasing interest, and this intersects with gendered expectations about familial roles. Integrating sociological scholarship on gender and families with consumer behavior research, and using a preregistered online survey of over 8000 American adults collected in the early months of the pandemic's emergence in the United States (May 2020–June 2020), we hypothesize that men in familial roles may express greater gun interest in response to financial instability, and theorize why such a process may also be observed among women. Analyses show that men's gun interest is unaffected by family roles or financial distress. Women in family roles—mothers, in particular—who experience financial stress, however, are significantly more amenable toward guns than other women and express interest at levels approaching those of men. We discuss how such findings increase our understanding of the heterogeneity of gun owners.