"While this 'gun divide' mimics growing partisan division in the country, it is more than that," said Mark Joslyn, professor of political science and the study's lead author. "Gun ownership may include an identity, a long-standing culture that shares identifiable traits and behaviors. The identity appears to have strengthened in recent years, and opposition to it has grown as well."

Joslyn said typically researchers looked at "what guns do," and therefore, past research has examined the association between crime and violence and the prevalence or availability of guns. However, Joslyn and his co-authors, as part of their recent study published in Social Science Quarterly, examined what guns mean to individuals and how this can shape political behavior.

"In addition, it appears non-gun owners are especially sensitive to recent polarization trends, favoring Democratic candidates in a substantially greater degree than in the past decades," Joslyn said. "So while we believe the electoral choices of gun owners is important, much of the increase in differences between gun and non-gun owners occurred because of the choices of non-gun owners."

"In addition to the political implications tied to the issue, the Pew survey also revealed deep cultural divides on guns."

"About half of gun owners said all or most of their friends also own guns, compared to just 1-in-10 non-gun owners who said the same."

"And in the long-running debate over guns and crime levels, more than half of gun owners — 54 percent — said they think more Americans owning guns would reduce crime, while 23 percent of non-gun owners said the same."

"Mr. Gottlieb said gun control advocates are the ones looking to play up such divisions."

“This divide has been created by media and politicians who are hostile to gun ownership who use terms like gun violence epidemic when in fact crimes committed where guns are used is in fact down,” he said."