Why conservatives are so obsessed with guns.

Why conservatives are so obsessed with guns.:



"A more workable psychological explanation begins by noting that psychologists have found consistent differences between conservatives and liberals in personality traits, attitudes, and moral stances. To summarize some of the research findings, conservatives tend to be more likely than liberals to accept or even embrace authority that is perceived to be legitimate. Conservatives tend to be more moralistic and more conventional than liberals. They tend to have a stronger need for order and control and stability and a greater dislike of change.

"Conservatives also tend to value equality less than liberals. They have less empathy and are more likely to see human nature as bad. Compared with liberals, their moral sense is less centered on fairness and kindness and more on loyalty, deference to authority, and moral and sexual purity. Conservatives also show a greater tendency than liberals toward dichotomous thinking and have a stronger need for certainty and cognitive consistency. (“I don’t do nuance,” George W. Bush famously told Joe Biden. )

"The differences are not universal, of course, and there is nothing intrinsically bad or intrinsically good in the characteristics typical of either camp. But conservatives tend to lean one way, liberals the other.

" And some of these differences appear to be directly expressed in divergent beliefs relevant to the gun control debate. For example...

"...But it is hard for conservatives to accept these arguments. The interaction between characteristic conservative personality patterns and universally shared patterns of cognitionleads to conservatives being disproportionately skeptical of evidence provided by “experts” and scholarly studies. So conservatives turn to other means to soothe their anxiety. Some project their own anger onto others, fantasizing that people of color, immigrants, and feminists are the cause of their own inner torments. Anger, if nothing else, makes them feel bigger and more powerful."



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