The Emergence of the Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement: Partisan Federalism, Not White Protectionism

Abstract

Abstract One-third of all US counties have enacted Second Amendment Sanctuary (2AS) ordinances, preventing the enforcement of state and federal gun control laws. We test two theories to explain 2AS enactment. First, 2AS may be a manifestation of partisan federalism. This perspective predicts that the nationalization of policy issues has led partisan groups to support “sanctuary” policies in friendly jurisdictions to frustrate the opposition. Second, given the close link between gun policy preferences and racial identities, 2AS enactment may be related to racial dynamics and especially the declining political power of White Americans. Thus, we should expect that 2AS adoptions will occur in majority White counties with declining White populations. We leverage a unique dataset of county-level 2AS enactments to test these hypotheses. We find strong evidence for the partisan federalism hypothesis. In contrast, we find weak and inconsistent evidence for the racial threat hypothesis.