Many times people ask me, “Are you a golfer?” And my typical response is, “No, but I play golf.” To embrace the identity of ‘golfer’ is to take on some attributes that I really don’t want to take on. It sort of raises certain expectations for me when I get on the golf course.
In the same way, being a person who owns a gun does not automatically make someone a ‘gun owner’ in terms of their identity. And in fact, there may be some assumptions that people make about who gun owners are and what gun owners are like that would make them want to distance themselves from the ‘gun owner’ identity. But adopting that identity is important for people to become more engaged in the gun culture. …
If they don’t develop a ‘gun owner’ identity, it’s unlikely that these new entrants into gun culture will become 2A advocates and there’s also, again, this concern that many have that being a 2A advocate today means buying into a whole package of political positions and ideologies that not all new gun owners are going to buy into.
— Professor David Yamane in Gun Culture 2.0 and the Changing Face of Gun Owners in America
