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Religion shapes American attitudes about gun ownership, study shows
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas researcher interviewed dozens of Christian gun owners in the Midwest for “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Gun Ownership,” a new article published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. “People have these stereotypes of religious individuals and think their connections to guns are simple, when in fact they’re fairly complex,” said Margaret Kelley, associate professor of American studies.
Study reveals less connectivity between key brain regions in people with FXTAS premutation
LAWRENCE — A new paper in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical from researchers at the University of Kansas reveals a possible early indicator of Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome, or FXTAS. The disease afflicts some older people who carry a “premutation” of the gene known as FMR1, which can lead to impairments in movement and cognition — while other people who carry the premutation are unaffected.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, [email protected]
Religion shapes American attitudes about gun ownership, study shows
LAWRENCE — Whether it’s a fear of violence or a steadfast belief in constitutional rights, Americans have strong opinions on why they need guns. But concerns about Satan and Armageddon also enter into their decision-making.
“People have these stereotypes of religious individuals and think their connections to guns are simple, when in fact they’re fairly complex,” said Margaret Kelley, associate professor of American studies at the University of Kansas.
“One of our main findings is religion actually drives responsible gun ownership. Because of their duty, they needed to be diligent about training and practicing and making sure they are careful with their firearm.”
That’s among the revelations in her new article, “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Gun Ownership,” which looks at how such beliefs shape national attitudes about these weapons. It appears in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.
Co-written with Abigail Vegter, a KU doctoral student in political science, the article incorporates interviews with dozens of Christian gun owners in the Midwest. This research suggests religious ethic “guides individual gun owners to stress the need to protect, be diligent and defend.”
For example, one such subject named Greg, a 63-year-old white man, discusses watching the film “American Sniper.” In this biopic of Chris Kyle, the Navy SEAL sniper is asked why he chose that job.
“He goes, ‘Because there’s evil in the world,’” Greg recalled in the article. Greg confirmed that supernatural evil was his chief reason for keeping firearms, whether as a protection from Satan or as a way to stave off the apocalypse.
Kelley noted that white evangelical Protestants are not only more likely to possess guns, but they are also less likely to support gun control. They are also more inclined to address gun violence with policy interventions that don’t reduce the amount or types of firearms such as “expanded concealed carry laws, better mental health screenings and a greater emphasis on God in public schools and society.”
Despite this close connection to the weapons themselves, Kelley found that actually firing them presented entirely different responses.
“Almost none of these people want to go out and use lethal force. In fact, that’s the last thing they want to do,” she said. “You have to really wrestle with big moral issues to carry a gun and to be willing to use it. That requires, at least in part, in their religious duty to not create more of a problem. There are certainly gun-toting folks out there who are not practicing and training, but many, including the individuals in my study, are very diligent.”
She says there are differences in theological foundations for many religions. Yet the Protestant relationship with firearms is particularly intense, whether it’s because of the influence of their evangelical wing or other attitudes about behavior unique to the faith.
On the flip side, Kelley said some religions draw the line in places Protestants do not.
“Catholics, for example, tend toward the other end of the spectrum,” she said. “That in the end, you simply can’t take a life. You might be wrong. Although there are exceptions for defense of self in many religious traditions, this is more common in some forms of Protestantism. But it’s not just Protestantism that leads to a religious or spiritual ethic of gun ownership.”
Currently, most people associate gun ownership more in terms of political and social movements instead of religion. Even that is showing signs of change.
“There are things like the National African American Gun Association and a group called Pink Pistols that is organized around supporting sexual minorities and women in their pursuit to arm themselves. We’re seeing a growing diversity among gun owners. I don’t know how that’s connected to religion necessarily, but there is in terms of social upheaval right now an interest in what it means to be armed,” she said.
Kelley herself bought a pistol when researching this project.
“I was a very adamant anti-gun person in my former research life,” she said.
“Because I’m a sociologist by training – and this is an observation project – I needed to participate in order to recruit. And it got very expensive. Going to the range, I would rent a firearm and buy ammunition. I didn’t have funding at that point, so I finally just decided, ‘I can’t continue if I don’t own a gun.’”
Now in her fifth year at KU, the Kansas native originally focused on drug and alcohol studies while earning her doctorate at New York University.
“I actually didn’t study guns until I moved back to Kansas and got into this very unique gun culture here,” said Kelley, who is also the director of graduate studies in her department.
Her research is part of a larger book project about “normal people using normal guns,” specifically focusing on the average woman gun owner in middle America.
While “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Gun Ownership” only relies on interviews with Kansans, Kelley believes it is quite representative of a significant chunk of the U.S. population.
“You will find these kinds of gun owners in all parts of the country,” she said. “Some people everywhere think this way about religion and guns.”
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Study reveals less connectivity between key brain regions in people with FXTAS premutation
LAWRENCE — A new paper in the journal NeuroImage: Clinical from researchers at the University of Kansas reveals a possible early indicator of Fragile X-associated tremor/ataxia syndrome, or FXTAS. The disease afflicts some older people who carry a “premutation” of the gene known as FMR1, which can lead to impairments in movement and cognition — while other people who carry the premutation are unaffected.
Among people with the FMR1 premutation, scientists have struggled to find biomarkers to indicate who might develop FXTAS.
The new study of 16 people with the FMR1 premutation and 18 healthy controls recorded participants’ brain activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a test of sensorimotor control. Participants were asked to manipulate images on a screen using a grip-force controller while the fMRI machine recorded the small changes in blood flow that occur when different parts of the brain become more active.
“It’s one of the first studies we know about to use fMRI to look at brain system function during motor behavior in a patient population at risk for developing motor deterioration and motor degeneration where they show a loss of balance, increased shaking or tremor as they reach their 50s, 60s or 70s,” said Matthew Mosconi, KU associate professor of clinical child psychology and associate scientist at KU’s Life Span Institute, who oversaw the investigation in his BRAIN Lab. “But we know very little about which premutation carriers will develop FXTAS. We know males are at greater risk than females. Otherwise, we don’t know a whole lot about which premutation carriers are going to get it. And we don’t know a whole lot about what’s going on in the brain functionally.”
The investigators were able to identify brain processes specifically linked to sensorimotor issues in aging people with the FMR1 premutation.
“We found the functional connectivity of cerebellum – a brain region that controls our movement accuracy and timing — and the extrastriate cortex, a brain area critically involved in processing visual information, is reduced in aging FMR1 premutation carriers,” said Walker McKinney, lead author of the new paper and a KU doctoral student in clinical child psychology. “In some people, these longer connections — like highways between the different parts of the brain — aren’t communicating as efficiently. Each part may be firing, but they’re not firing together.”
Significantly, the researchers found very little overlap in terms of functional connectivity of this pathway between premutation carriers and healthy controls in the study, suggesting connectivity levels between the cerebellum and extrastriate cortex could serve as an early emerging indicator of FXTAS, or predict who among FMR1 carriers will develop the characteristic symptoms of FXTAS before they develop.
“When studies get reported, oftentimes we’re talking about a ‘mean difference’ between groups — there’s always overlap with healthy people and there’s variability there,” Mosconi said. “With our study, the fact that there’s minimal overlap between premutation carriers and controls suggests that this may be what we would call a biomarker. What we need to do now is follow this measure and these people over time to determine who gets FXTAS and who doesn’t. In other words, this seems like a clear target for understanding brain degeneration in FXTAS and identifying it early in its course.”
McKinney and Mosconi’s co-authors on the paper were James Bartolotti of KU’s Life Span Institute, Dr. Pravin Khemani of the Swedish Neuroscience Institute, and Jun Yi Wang and Randi Hagerman of the University of California-Davis.
Other findings in the paper, which builds on the researchers’ previous investigations, include:
- Relative to healthy controls, premutation carriers showed increased trial-to-trial variability of force output, though this was specific to younger premutation carriers.
- Relative to healthy controls, premutation carriers also showed reduced extrastriate activation during force relative to rest.
- Increased reaction time was associated with more severe clinically rated neurological abnormalities.
The work was supported by the Once Upon A Time Foundation and the Kansas Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Research Center (KIDDRC). A KU GO award is enabling followup research on these findings and biomarkers.
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