Freedom is Racist.

I am a white male American gun owner. I am, therefore, a racist. I have a disease. I am powerless against my racism. I will have this racism the rest of my life. Relapse is part of recovery. Recovery is impossible, however, while I remain a white male American gun owner. Therefore it is in the interest of public policy to alter one of the above descriptors. Guess which descriptor the researchers want to alter?

According to this Medical Daily article, (WARNING: extremely annoying autoplay ads which cannot be permanently paused or muted cause frustration and violent ideation in white American males) we creepy-ass crackers can no longer hide our racist leanings through mere lies thanks to the wonders of a statistical concept known as Symbolic Racism.

Symbolic racism is less obvious than blatant or overt racism. It deals more with attitudes than actions, suggestions instead of slurs. The blatant racism of Jim Crow laws, which relegated blacks to the backs of buses and subjected them to many other inequalities, have been replaced, the researchers assert, by more discreet forms of discrimination. These are reflected in wide support for policies that statistically hinder blacks, such as longer prison sentences, and opposition to programs that may benefit them, such as welfare.

Judging racism can be tricky, as it lends itself to interpretation quite frequently. Researchers formulated questions that they believed illuminated racist attitudes in respondents.

This vile bias which lies latent in the breast of every white male American relates directly to his attitude toward gun ownership.

For every one point increase in symbolic racism — measured on a five-point scale — the chance someone had a gun in the home rose by 50 percent, and the chance the respondent supported policies that allowed people to carry concealed guns rose by 28 percent.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, or what your political affiliation or attitude toward the government. If you’re in favor of gun ownership, you’re a racist.

Conservatism, anti-government sentiment, party identification, being from a southern state, were also associated with opposition to gun controls, but the association between racism and the gun-related outcomes remained after accounting for these factors and other participant characteristics (age, education, income, gender).

See? It says so right there, so it must be true.

But why has this vital knowledge only come to light at this late date?

“We were initially surprised that no one had studied this issue before,” said study co-author Dr. Dermot Lynott, from Lancaster University, in a statement. “However, the U.S. government cut research funding for gun-related research over decade and a half ago, so research in this area has been somewhat suppressed.”

I searched in vain for the phrase “Centers for Disease Control,” but I swear I can smell their money in there somewhere.

The national origin of the authors adds a layer of smug Britishness, contributing to the study’s authority.

“Coming from countries with strong gun control policies, and a 30-fold lower rate of gun-related homicides, we found the arguments for opposing gun control counterintuitive and somewhat illogical,” said co-author Dr. Kerry O’Brien, from the University of Manchester and Monash University, two British universities that, along with Lynott’s research headquarters, reside in a country where 6.2 people per 100,000 own a gun.

I, for one, welcome our new unarmed and helpless overlords.

What drives this irrational urge for gun ownership? An equally irrational desire for freedom. Says so right here:

“Why would you keep them? So we decided to examine what social and psychological factors predict gun ownership and opposition to gun control.”

Part of the answer is simply freedom. Americans whose family is steeped in the traditions of southern conservatism tend to enjoy exercising their second amendment Constitutional right.

So you see, freedom is racist. Or something.

H/T to Sipsey Street.