I live in a very liberal state that has a red belt. Let me tell you, if anything, the racism in white America is vastly undersold. I am white. I've had numerous occasions where people will use racial epithets with me, a complete stranger, in a business setting. Not all people who are rural are racists, but the percentage that are openly hostile to POC or even people with different backgrounds is far higher in small communities. You don't need to go far to find people who literally are okay with murdering people over politics and skin color. I don't think this is some recent change either, it's more likely that the article got it right, the world changed and they chose not to. They aren't bad people, but that doesn't mean they get a pass on the parts of them that are bad.

I don't think urban people feel as alienated by the government. I think that they feel less likely to trust people from urban areas with outsize power telling them that they were born wrong and using those beliefs to inflict pain and harassment on already people already dealing with a lot.

Regarding gun laws unless the country up and decides to make a constitutional amendment nothing is going to happen with guns. No one is coming after them. To paraphrase a statement "Once Americans decided killing schoolchildren was acceptable the gun debate was over". The mass killings are going to continue happening. No good people with guns will show up. And we'll all have thoughts and prayers on our Facebook feeds. The gun debate has nothing to do with guns. It has to do with the rights of a hobby being more important than the rights of citizens to live. No amount of rifles or handguns will be able to overthrow a government that can literally kill you from a locked room a world away. If guns alone could stop the US military there would be no ongoing war in the middle east. Firearms are fun, I totally get it, but let's be real that we're choosing fun over human life.