Political psychology of gun control: Mapping actor coalitions and policy frames

Gun control policy is one of the most controversial debates in contemporary politics, involving crises and deep grievances. The debate is marked by tragic events, violent shootings, and intense episodes of blame attribution driven by a fundamental disagreement over the nature of moral authority. Most countries have a restrictive gun control policy but the legislative diversity and the surrounding ethical dilemmas remain an important puzzle for political scientists. Despite being a deeply polarised issue, the gun policy debate is different from other polarising policy debates in that it sustains a stable coalition structure over time. What explains this stability? We approach our question from the lenses of moral foundations. Moral Foundations Theory suggests that moral intuitions are based on five psychological foundations, which all developed in relation to particular evolutionary challenges. Care relates to human sensitivity to prevent suffering, and to empathize and care for others; Fairness is based on justice, inequality, reciprocity, and unbiased treatment; Loyalty is built around group-based orientation; Authority relates to traditions, hierarchical social orders, and respecting those with power; Purity centres around an appreciation for an elevated way of life, and a concern for cultural sacredness; and Liberty is based on economic or social self-determination. Moral foundations have been used to study moral attitudes on issues such as same-sex marriage, vaccine hesitancy or climate change. Studying the long-term evolution (2012-2022) of the gun control policy in the United States, we argue that moral values anchor actors into stable antagonistic camps. Using 3000 news agency articles from New York Times and Wall Street Journal, our analysis is based on Discourse Network Analysis, which is an application of social network analysis (SNA) to policy debates. It comprises two steps: first a descriptive, exploratory analysis of competing coalitions in a debate through cluster analysis, identifying ties among actors (bridges), connecting actors (brokers) and opinion leaders, using centrality measures; second a statistical network analysis of actors’ statements about different policy choices or arguments. DNA is a mixed-methods technique that combines qualitative content analysis with quantitative social network analysis. By using this method, we emphasize which moral foundations represent the glue that binds actors together and which foundations polarize them into opposing camps, ultimately explaining which (combinations of) foundations are decisive to understand and differentiate between the underlying moral system of gun rights and gun control supporters. We offer a toolkit that studies the political psychology foundations of the gun control debate from an empirical perspective. Our analytical framework can be applied to a range of controversial policy areas across the world.