Using a database of all legislative activities in state legislatures from 2011 to 2015, I scope on the 2,312 bills introduced relating to gun rights. In this thesis I develop a theory of gun rights legislation, rooted in white supremacy that stems from slavery and its collapse. As a result, I fill a gap in scholarship on gun legislation that analyzes how the legacy of slavery and its ties with the racial and political identity of a legislator influences the probability of that legislator introducing gun rights bills. I expect that state legislators from the South who are White, Republican, and reside in once high-enslaved-population-districts introduce gun rights bills more than any other group in America. I expect a positive relationship between the share of the enslaved population in a district and the likelihood that a White legislator introduces gun rights legislation. Utilizing the 1860 US Census (depicting the percentage of the population enslaved in South), a legislator-level data set including the race and partisanship of the lawmakers, I establish multi-leveled models to test this hypothesis against various control variables, including those based on NRA grade, # of gun sellers in a district, the % of rural in a district, violent crime, and median income.
