The Minimal Effects of Mass Shootings on Voters' Policy Preferences

• In Event: Political Violence, Threats, and Political Behavior

Abstract

This study investigates whether mass shootings affect voters' preferences for policies designed to restrict or expand gun ownership. Geographic proximity to "focusing events" like mass shootings may lead citizens to update their policy preferences, either by activating individual self-interest or by providing a low-cost signal of the need for policies to reduce random acts of gun violence. Utilizing high-frequency survey data from July 2019 through January 2021, I use a stacked difference-in-differences design to compare changes in support for gun control in media markets experiencing mass shootings during this period to trends in opinion in media markets not recently exposed to mass shootings. I estimate that mass shootings had minimal immediate effects on public support for specific gun control measures, even in the weeks following an incident. Additionally, there is limited evidence that mass shootings polarized public opinion among different groups of voters or that extreme events led to even modest changes in public opinion. Ultimately, I conclude that mass shootings had minimal effects on the policy preferences of nearby citizens, demonstrating that the public does not always incorporate proximate events into its political attitudes.

Author

• Ryan Baxter-King, UCLA/Vanderbilt