Do The Societal Issues Influence Preference On Gun Laws?

Gun Control
Name of Student
Institution Affiliation
Gun Control
Introduction
The question of gun control has been a highly contested issue in the US with supporters and opponents alike giving a myriad of reasons for their choice. But with the recent spate of public mass shootings, both authorities and citizens have continued to raise critical questions concerning their safety and public policy to curb the menace. Gun rights and gun control activists have continued to advocate for tighter gun control measures pushing legislation on gun laws through push for increased media attention and public interest. Gun rights lobbyists such as the powerful Nationals Rifle Association (NRA) have continued to advocate for increased access to firearms with emphasis given to qualified professionals (Newman & Hartman, 2017).
According to Hamilton & Kposowa (2015), there are at least 55,000 people who die as a result of injuries inflicted through violence associated with firearms in the United States. The data indicates that the US residents kill each other at unusually high rates as compared to similarly developed states in Europe and Asia. For instance, the homicide rates in the US in 2009 was 5.0 per 100,000, more than four times the median rate for all the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (Hamilton & Kposowa, 2015: p.85). The unusually high and scary number of deaths on innocent civilians is an important question that requires further investigation and input from the citizens.
In this study, I wish to explore the various determinants that influence preference on gun control throughout the United States. An important factor in this research is to establish how preference on gun laws (Favor or Oppose) is influence by societal issues. My prediction regarding the relationship between different societal issues and how they influence preference on gun laws is that their influence is insignificant in deciding preference on gun laws.
In order to determine how various societal issues influence preference on gun laws, I decided to explore the data collected by the General Social Survey (GSS- http://gss.norc.org/get-the-data/spss) that conducts voluntary survey from participants across the United States. I especially explored the 2014 data that contained certain societal issues that may influence the public opinion on the subject of gun law and its preference. Therefore, the study utilized the 2014 GSS data to establish the relationship between independent variables (societal issues) and how they influence preference on gun law (the dependent variable). This study utilized a multiple regression model to establish how multiple independent variables influence the dependent variable allowing me to pinpoint the most influential independent variable that influences preference on gun laws.
Research Questions and Hypothesis
Research Question: Do the societal issues (Individual incomes, race, household incomes and view that immigrant increase crimes rate) influence preference on gun laws?
Hypothesis
Null Hypothesis
There is a significant influence of societal issues (Individual incomes, race, household incomes and view that immigrant increase crimes rate) on the preference on gun laws.
Alternative Hypothesis
The influence on the preference on gun laws by societal issues (Individual incomes, race, household incomes and view that immigrant increase crimes rate) is insignificant.
This final model of this study satisfies all the underlying assumptions associated with running an effective multiple regression analysis. The data used in this research study has no serious outliers, and none of the independent variables I examined proved to be highly correlated with one another. After reviewing both a scatter plot of the residuals against the predicted values of gun law preferences as well as histograms of the standardized residuals, I can confirm that the error terms are normally distributed and that the variance is generally constant throughout the sample. The finding allowed me to proceed in the multiple regression analysis without performing a transformation on the dependent variable.
The results of my regression analysis indicate that the influence on the preference on gun laws by societal issues (Individual incomes, race, household incomes and view that immigrant increase crimes rate) is insignificant thereby rejecting the null hypothesis. The variables discussed have negligible influence on people’s decision regarding preference on gun laws.
Data Description
To investigate how various societal factors influence the preference on gun laws, I utilized the GSS 2014 (http://gss.norc.org/get-the-data/spss) data collected from across the United States. The data utilized contained the variables that best describe societal issues that are likely to be associated with the preference on gun laws for such reasons as self-protection, responding to attackers on mass shootings among others. The 2014 GSS data has a total of 496 various obtained through surveys collected from willing participants/respondents in 2014. Relevant in this study, I have narrowed down to four independent variables that best explain societal issues that can influence the dependent variable (preference for gun control- favor or oppose). These include respondents’ race (white, black, other) represented by race, income range of the respondent represented by rincome, the total family income represented by income and lastly, the view that immigrants increase crimes rate represented by immcrime.
Table 1 displays various descriptive statistics for my sample, which was made up of data from the total collected in 2014 by GSS. Race of the respondent (Race) was comprised of n=2538; race of the respondent (rincome) = 1523, total family income (income) = 2314, and that immigrants increase crimes rate (immcrime) = 1224. The valid data used in this study was 497. The dependent variable represented by gunlaw is a preference on gun laws (Favor or oppose gun permits).
Also shown in figure 2, I created a histogram of residuals to ensure that there was no heteroscedasticity or non-normality of residuals. With the graph looking normal (normally distributed), I proceeded with the analysis without making any corrections.
I used a similar process in generating a multiple regression of gun law preference and the independent variables discussed above. Using scatter plots, I saw no severe violations of these assumptions. Regression descriptive statistics preference on gun laws is also in table 3, while the scatter plots are located in figure 1.
Additionally, before running the regression analysis, I created a correlation table that can be seen in Table 2 to ensure there is no serious multicollinearity between the independent variables. Based on the assumption that multicollinearity exists when two independent variables have a correlation coefficient with an absolute value of .9 or higher, I can conclude that serious multicollinearity is not an issue in this regression analysis. Further, since the tolerance statistics under coefficients in Table 4 are all above 0.10, we further agree that there is no serious multicollinearity (Rule of thumb: Tolerance values less than 0.10 indicate collinearity). The conclusion can be ascertained using the collinearity diagnostics table under table 4 where the condition index indicates all the values are below 30 (rule of thumb: If the condition index is above 30, the regression may have significant multicollinearity).
Regression Analysis
To estimate the independent variables that determine graduation rates I estimate an initial linear regression model to be:
Gunlaw= α + β1 Race+ β2 rincome + β3 income+ β4 immcrime + ε
Based on the data available, I estimated that these variables rate high among societal issues that may influence preference on gun laws. On these variables, respondents with divergent societal issues are likely to have different views on the question of gun control. For example, as depicted on the crosstabs table (tables 3) whites are less like to favor gun laws (68.5 %) as compared to blacks and other races (82.5% and 83.1% respectively). Likewise, respondents who strongly disagree that immigrants increase crime rates are more like to favor gun laws (74.5%) as opposed to respondents who strongly agree that immigrants increase crime rates who favor gun laws by 63.9%. Respondents earning an annual income of less than $1000 are more likely to favor gun laws (81.8%) as compared to respondents earning an annual income ranging $4000-$4999 (55.6%).
The issue of gun laws is deeply rooted in the American community with diverse reasons supporting or opposing the laws. Therefore, using the data used for this study, determining the exact reasons that will account for reasons behind gun law preference is a bit hard. However, we can estimate how far the independent variables influence preference on gun laws. Using the R2 (coefficient of determination) under table 4 (analysis of variance), we can estimate that the model used explains approximately 5.2 % of the variations of preference in gun laws. In other words, the independent variables used for this study only account for 5.2% on the issue of preference on gun laws.
Empirical Results
Using the model presented in table 4, I was able to analyze the results of this test in terms of statistical and economic significance. The standardized coefficient for the race of the respondent (race) is -0.118. Therefore, for every unit increase in the race (coded as 1= white, 2=black, 3= other), we expect a -0.12 decrease in the gunlaw score (coded as 1=favor, 2= oppose), holding all other variables constant. Likewise, for every unit increase in the respondent’s income (coded below), we expect a -0.01 decrease in the gunlaw score (coded as 1=favor, 2= oppose), holding all other variables constant.
For every unit increase in the total family income (coded below), we expect a .024 increase in the gunlaw score (coded as 1=favor, 2= oppose), holding all other variables constant. For every unit increase in immcrime (coded as 1= Agree strongly, 2= Agree, 3= neither agree nor disagree, 4 = disagree, 5= disagree strongly), we expect a -0.06 decrease in the gunlaw score (coded as 1=favor, 2= oppose), holding all other variables constant.
The race of the respondent is negatively related to the preference on gun laws and is statistically significant at p=.000. Similarly, the income of the respondent is negatively related to the preference on gun laws and is not statistically significant at p=.583. The total income of the family is positively related to their preference on gun laws. Immigrants increase crimes rate is negatively related to preference on gun laws contrary to the popular believe that increased migrant population would make people demand for more guns with fewer restrictions for self-protection.
income/ rincome code:
Code

Label

1

Lt $1000

2

$1000 to 2999

3

$3000 to 3999

4

$4000 to 4999

5

$5000 to 5999

6

$6000 to 6999

7

$7000 to 7999

8

$8000 to 9999

9

$10000 - 14999

10

$15000 - 19999

11

$20000 - 24999

12

$25000 or more

Summary and Discussion
The question of gun control has become a perennial issue on the United States both in the public domain and American politics. The increased public outcry that pushes for increased and tighter gun laws is met with sharp criticisms and strong opposition from gun rights lobbyists and associated groups. This study investigated the determinants of preference on gun laws (oppose or favor) in the United States. Using data derived from the General Social Survey (GSS 2014), we estimate the influence that race, individual income, family income and view that immigrants increase crime rates have on their preference for or against gun laws (i.e., favor or oppose).
The result has indicated that there is a generally negative and weak relationship between these factors and the preference for gun laws. While all other variables indicate that the relationship is negative, total family income indicates a very weak positive relationship with someone’s view on gun laws. Additional research is recommended targeting both opponents and supporters of gun laws with emphasis on the reasons behind their choices. A major challenge for this research is that the model is not a perfect fit with only 5.2% of the model explaining variations in the preference on gun laws.
Table 1: Tables and Figures
Descriptive Statistics


N

Minimum

Maximum

Mean

Std. Deviation

Variance

Favor or oppose gun permits

1693

1

2

1.28

.448

.200

Race of respondent

2538

1

3

1.36

.661

.437

Respondents income

1523

1

12

10.38

2.914

8.490

Total family income

2314

1

12

10.96

2.349

5.519

Immigrants increase crime rates

1224

1

5

3.41

1.025

1.050

Valid N (listwise)

497






Figures 1: Scatter plots of Gun law Preference Vs. independent variables
Table 2: Correlations


Favor or oppose gun permits

Race of respondent

Respondents income

Total family income

Immigrants increase crime rates

Pearson Correlation

Favor or oppose gun permits

1.000

-.184

.034

.078

-.131


Race of respondent

-.184

1.000

-.073

-.131

.088


Respondents income

.034

-.073

1.000

.622

-.005


Total family income

.078

-.131

.622

1.000

.066


Immigrants increase crime rates

-.131

.088

-.005

.066

1.000

Sig. (1-tailed)

Favor or oppose gun permits

.

.000

.228

.042

.002


Race of respondent

.000

.

.053

.002

.025


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