Morality Appraisals in Consumer Responsibilization

Abstract In recent decades, U.S. gun rights lobbying groups, politicians, courts, and market actors have sought to responsibilize U.S. consumers to use firearms to address the societal problem of crime. These efforts center an interpretation of the constitutional right to keep and bear arms guaranteed by the Second Amendment as an entitlement for individuals to practice armed self-defense. Using interview and online discussion data, this research investigates consumers’ responses to responsibilization for this morally fraught set of behaviors, and the role of consumers’ various understandings of the right to bear arms in these responses. Findings show that consumers consider multiple, specific armed protection scenarios and accept responsibilization in only a portion of these scenarios while rejecting it for the remainder. Acceptance is determined by their appraisals of the morality of consumer responsibilization subprocesses. Consumers’ understanding of the constitutional right serves as a heuristic in these appraisals, with some understandings leading consumers to accept responsibilization across a much larger proportion of scenarios than others. Contributions include illustrating response to consumer responsibilization as a proportionality; illuminating consumers’ active role in appraising responsibilizing efforts; and demonstrating how some consumers come to understand a responsibilized behavior as a moral entitlement.