Hey Gun Owners! "Science" Says You're Racist!

A recent study found that people who own guns and oppose gun control legislation are more likely to be racist than people who don’t own guns. The study carefully measured racism through a barrage of highly technical tests that eliminated the racial-bias that is present in all individuals to clearly identify those individuals who are objectively racist. At least that was the original plan before the researchers decided that was too much work and just wrote “conservative=racist” on a white board and called it a day.

The research paper submitted explains how measures of symbolic racism were used to identify racist attitudes. Symbolic racism is measured by a series of questions regarding social welfare and affirmative action where favoring limited government is the same as suiting up in white every Friday to watch Birth of a Nation with your local KKK chapter. Admittedly the symbolic racism test was not developed by the gun-racism research team so the test questions aren’t necessarily biased, but then the introduction section of the gun-racism paper blows up that argument with this gem, “conservative ideologies and racism are inherently related.” The study thus becomes less of a scientific process to determine sociological trends that predict gun ownership, and more of an exercise timing the delay between publication and MSNBC’s interview call.

The gun owner-racism research paper doesn’t just display a complete misunderstanding of scientific objectivity; it displays a comprehension of socio-psychology and political attitudes that one would expect from a poorly informed 3^rd grader. It is no more correct to argue that conservative ideologies are racist than it is to argue that liberal ideologies are turning people gay and destroying this country. Though the authors of the paper would argue that small government hurts minorities, because they are incapable of achieving anything without the caring hand of the government to guide them, future research may benefit from identifying racist attitudes more scientifically than: