Assessing the Determinants of Gun Ownership in Vermont

Recent debates over gun control versus the gun rights provided by the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution focus interest on the motivations behind gun ownership by American citizens. To find out, a random sample of registered Vermont voters received a mail survey. Hoping to fill a gap in existing gun research by testing for the impact of political ideology, among more typical predictors such as age, gender, income, and education, the survey asked respondents to rank their political identification on a scale from extremely liberal to extremely moderate and answer questions about gun ownership and their reasons behind owning, or not owning a gun. Results indicate that the decision to own guns, and how many, strongly correlates with political ideology, education and gender, suggesting important implications for passing gun control legislation.