A dick move

One of the most popular Friday posts I ever wrote was about a study that showed that men with smaller penises tended to buy sports cars to impress other people. Another area where some people have suspected a similar relationship is gun ownership. I mean c’mon, is there anything more obvious a penis crutch than owning a large rifle, especially a semi-automatic one? After all, a semi-automatic gun is defined as one that ‘automatically reloads its action mechanism to prepare it for subsequent firing’.

Well, I am sorry to throw some cold water on your prejudices with a new study by researchers from Texas and Florida (ok, given their current residence they might be biased).

What temperature is the water?

Source: The internet (where else?)

They used the 2023 Masculinity, Sexual Health, and Politics survey of 1,840 men in the US to investigate the relationship between a man’s best friend and his penis. Contrary to common prejudices they found that gun ownership positively correlates with penis satisfaction once controlled for social economic status and other factors.

Men who are less dissatisfied with their penis length (note the subjectivity of this measure, men can have a tiny gun yet still think they are a big dick…) are more likely to own guns and tend to own more guns. Only with older men above 60, the correlation disappears.

Relationship between satisfaction with penis length and probability of gun ownership

Source: Hill et al. (2024)

Why this is the case is anyone’s guess. The study doesn’t help you there. All it shows is that owning a gun is a real dick move, though only for men. Nothing is known about the relationship between gun ownership and women’s ‘size’, however defined.