Effecting change in the aftermath of school shootings

Abstract

School shootings energize pro-gun advocates but better organized and more enduring gun control efforts could affect legislative change after such tragedies.

Since the massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado nearly 25 years ago, there have been 373 instances of gun violence in US schools, resulting in 192 deaths and 413 injuries (1). In 2020, firearm injuries became the leading cause of pediatric deaths in the United States (2). These events are traumatizing to children and devastating to parents. School shootings garner intense media coverage and elicit strong reactions from the public. Perhaps best characterized by the phrase “What is it going to take for us to do something about this?” school shootings are often followed by calls to action for gun control, pointing to the self-evident acuity of the problem while the wounds (immediate or vicarious) remain fresh.

Proponents of gun control view school shootings and their aftermath as fleeting moments in which galvanizing support (in all forms) for various gun control policies can be, perhaps temporarily, within reach. However, in this issue of Science Advances, an analysis of donations to the National Rifle Association’s political action committee by Tobias Roemer reveals a startling pattern of counter-mobilization following school shootings (3).

The notion that mass shootings (and particularly school shootings) may act as focusing events, that present “windows of opportunity” or “policy windows” for legislative action on gun control, is grounded in national and international history and endures in both our collective consciousness and our strategic approaches to policy advocacy. The Gun Control Act of 1968, regulating interstate firearms commerce, came after the assassinations of John F Kennedy in 1963, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King in 1968. In 1989, a man with a long criminal history shot and killed 5 students and wounded 32 others at an elementary school in Stockton, California, and California moved swiftly to enact a state level assault weapons ban (Roberti-Roos Assault Weapons Control Act of 1989). Subsequent mass shootings, including the massacre at Luby’s Cafeteria in Killeen, Texas, collectively precipitated the 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban, which expired per its sunset provision in 2004. Internationally, the introduction of the United Kingdoms’ Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 was precipitated by national outrage over a school shooting in Dunblane, Scotland in 1996, which remains the deadliest shooting in UK history. The sudden passage of Australia’s 1996 National Firearms Act came less than a month after a mass shooting at Port Arthur, that nation’s worst.

Calls to renew the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban in the US or establish other federal gun control measures—such as expanded background checks for gun purchases or closing the “gun show loophole”—were made in the aftermath of the 2007 Virginia Tech, 2012 Sandy Hook, and 2018 Parkland massacres, to mention only a few. However, it was not until 2022 that notable federal gun control legislation was passed by the US Congress. Do the lessons learned from 20th century gun control movements no longer hold?

Research has shown that mobilizing support for gun control in the aftermath of school shootings or other egregious acts of gun violence may be pragmatic, as it appears as though proximity to mass shootings is associated with heightened public support for gun control across political party lines in the US (4). Some studies suggest mass shootings affect public support for permits to purchase firearms differentially by political party; however, school shootings appear to be exceptional, leading both parties to increase support for permit requirements in the immediate aftermath of such shootings (5).

A number of studies have linked mass shootings and increasing calls for stricter gun legislation to increases in firearm sales (6). In fact, it appears as though states with Republican-controlled legislatures are significantly more likely to loosen gun laws following mass shootings; however, the impact of school shootings on gun control enactments in Democratic-controlled state legislatures was not significant (7). The net result has been the gradual loosening of gun laws in red states and comparatively little progress tightening gun laws in blue states or at the federal level. Why cannot the US seem to convert these windows of opportunity into meaningful gun control legislation?

Roemer’s study compares National Rifle Association Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) donors and donations in 121 counties that experienced a school shooting between 2000 and 2022 to donors and donations in counties that did not via a staggered difference-in differences design. The analysis suggests the number of donors and amounts donated to the NRA-PVF significantly and durably increased in counties that experienced a school shooting the years following the event. Not only did school shootings appear to mobilize new NRA-PVF donors to step off the sidelines, there were 10 counties that experienced a school shooting in which nobody donated pre-shooting, but the group of new donors that emerged began donating annually and durably in the years following school shootings. Roemer examined advertisement spending by the NRA and impressions their ads made on Meta platforms during the analysis period and found no significant change, which largely rules out the notion that the increase in donations following school shootings was driven by an NRA marketing campaign or spike in advertisement spending.

Roemer’s supplemental analysis of donors and donations to the Giffords political action committee (one of the leading gun control advocacy groups in the US) found no significant impact on donors or amounts donated in the aftermath of school shootings. Finding no significant impact on Giffords donations underscores the differential mobilization that school shootings appear to produce among gun control proponents and opponents. Given that gun control opponents appear to counter-mobilize during these windows of opportunity, the findings suggest that gun control efforts need to be more enduring and better organized as a movement rather than focused intensely during the period immediately after a school shooting.

Gun control is far from the most important issue for most Americans. However, gun owners, by contrast, are a constituency that is highly invested in this issue and who influence policy. This is true even in a situation in which the vast majority of Americans, in principle, support specific forms of stricter gun control (8). When it comes to issues such as gun control, election-motivated politicians are highly accountable to a minority of voters who care intensely about these issues, knowing that the rest of the electorate will decide whether to reelect them based on their stance on other policy issues. Single-issue voters see the policy space as unidimensional; therefore, they can use voting to punish and reward politicians for specific policies, keeping them in check (8). Roemer’s findings regarding donation activity may be attributable to the degree to which gun control opponents are singularly focused and eminently able to mobilize.

Goss (9) argues that American gun control organizations have not come together to form a true social movement in the manner their opponents have. This so-called “Missing Movement” refers to the lack of mass engagement, inattention from media as the authoritative pro-regulation source, and difficulty forming robust local networks that provide the bandwidth to engage in political and legal conflicts regarding gun control wherever and whenever they arise. The prospects of such a movement forming are certainly better than they were in 2006, as organizations such as Giffords and Everytown have since emerged and risen to national prominence. However, Roemer’s supplemental analysis of Giffords donations suggests that these organizations are yet to benefit from a significant mobilization increase following school shootings, a fundamental disadvantage.

Gun control advocates view school shootings as potential catalysts for legislative action, tightening restrictions on firearms. Opponents view them as vulnerable moments requiring proactive mobilization. Both groups have had, at one moment or another, good reason to do so. Major federal gun control bills were adopted in the aftermath of egregious acts of gun violence in 1968, 1993, and 1994. Since that time, however, it seems as though these windows of opportunity have closed and operate in the opposite direction, spurring waves of gun purchasing (10), significantly increasing donations to the NRA and its political action committee (3), and successfully enacting laws at the state level that loosen existing gun controls (7).