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Abstract
The recent spate of mass public shootings in the United States raises important questions about how these tragic events might impact mass opinion and public policy. Integrating research on focusing events, contextual effects and perceived threat, this article stipulates that residing near a mass shooting should increase support for gun control by making the threat of gun violence more salient. Drawing upon multiple data sources on mass public shootings paired with large-N survey data, it demonstrates that increased proximity to a mass shooting is associated with heightened public support for stricter gun control. Importantly, the results show that this effect does not vary by partisanship, but does vary as a function of salience-related event factors, such as repetition, magnitude and recency. Critically, the core result is replicated using panel data. Together, these results suggest a process of context-driven policy feedback between existing gun laws, egregious gun violence and demand for policy change.
Highlights
We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults
Using data from multiple sources on mass public shootings merged with the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), we show that increased proximity to a mass shooting is associated with heightened public support for stricter government regulation of firearms
The results strongly align with expectations, as an increase in proximity to a mass public shooting is associated with a significant increase in support for stricter gun control laws (β = 0.334, s.e. = 0.172, p < 0.05)
Summary
The recent spate of mass public shootings in the United States raises important questions about how these tragic events might impact mass opinion and public policy. Integrating research on focusing events, contextual effects and perceived threat, this article stipulates that residing near a mass shooting should increase support for gun control by making the threat of gun violence more salient. The core result is replicated using panel data. Together, these results suggest a process of context-driven policy feedback between existing gun laws, egregious gun violence and demand for policy change. We gather here in memory of twenty beautiful children and six remarkable adults. On 14 December 2012, a young man opened fire on twenty-eight people at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, killing twenty school children and six adult staff members in one of the worst mass public shootings in recent US history.
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