I am a PhD candidate at American University in Washington, DC. I am interested in state formation and governance in low income countries. My dissertation examines the influence of foreign aid on incumbent advantage in African presidential elections.Happy as a gun owner?
Voters in small, Southern US towns may be bitter and clinging to guns or religion, but there is some strong evidence that Obama got the relationship between voting behaviour, economics, and sociology wrong.
More interesting than than all this “bittergate” crap is that according to Arthur Brooks, US gun owners
have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.
Nor are they “bitter.” In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were “very happy,” while 9% were “not too happy.” Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.
In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling “outraged at something somebody had done.
I have at least one good joke about the last point (it involves problem solving) and I would really like a sociologist to get to work explaining Brooks’ data.
[via Marginal Revolution]
