Trump’s Wrong: Gun Owners More Likely to Vote

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Gun rights candidates often falsely exaggerate their opponent’s position, claiming they want to confiscate weapons from law-abiding citizens. Mark R. Joslyn, professor of political science at the University of Kansas, says this is one of the reasons why gun owners generally vote more reliably than non-gun owners.

In a speech at a National Rifle Association convention on May 18, former President Donald Trump employed that very tactic, deceptively stoking fears that if President Joe Biden is reelected, the government will be “coming for your guns.” Biden has advocated a ban on so-called assault weapons, but he has not proposed confiscating ones currently owned. Trump followed it up by claiming that gun owners don’t vote as often as non-gun owners. That’s wrong.

In his 2020 book, “: The influence of gun ownership on political behavior and attitudes,” Joslyn analyzed two public databases that have tracked American attitudes for decades to conclude that gun owners are more likely to vote compared with non-owners, that the gap is widening, and that the more guns one owns the more likely one