School Shootings Increase NRA Donations

The US has experienced a tragic increase in school shootings in recent years. Between 1995 and 2021, shootings on campuses of US schools have resulted in over 300 deaths and touched on the lives of more than 240,000 students, thrusting the issue into the forefront of public concern and sparking strong debates about the need for stricter gun regulation in the US. Policy proposals are often aimed at reducing access to firearms and increasing background checks for potential gun owners.

Previous scholarship on the consequences of school (and mass) shootings has found that citizens, on average, tend to become more left-wing in their attitudes toward gun regulation and voting behavior after shootings... On the legislative side, these tragic events often catalyze the introduction of new gun control bills. Nonetheless, in the vast majority of cases, gun regulation remains either unchanged or becomes even less restrictive in the aftermath of shootings. This limited legislative action on gun regulation raises a critical question: Why does the United States continue to struggle with implementing meaningful gun control measures despite recurring tragedies and public support for such measures? (...)

Using address-level data from 225,000 individual donations in a difference-in-differences design, this study provides causal evidence suggesting that donations to the NRA surge in counties that experience school shootings. In stark contrast to the typically transient nature of pro-gun regulation movements, this uptick in political participation endures over multiple years, remaining elevated over comparatively long periods of time. These effects are largest in states where gun regulation is weakest, adding to the political difficulties of enacting gun regulation in states with the greatest potential benefits in terms of reducing firearm-related deaths. Donations to gun control groups in affected regions do not seem to specifically respond to such events. (...)

In general, these effects are consistent with previous findings that suggest that gun rights supporters are a very politically active constituency that is comparatively easy to mobilize. Moreover, these findings are consistent with studies finding that gun rights supporters respond to threats of gun regulation by, e.g., preemptively purchasing guns, gathering information about gun rights, or joining gun rights organizations, especially after incidents that receive considerable media attention. The empirical pattern also aligns with anecdotal evidence suggesting that gun rights supporters mobilize by contacting legislators when perceiving gun rights under threat. (...)

Results

• The results of this study lead to three conclusions. First, school shootings have important effects on political participation on the political right. The causal estimates of this study demonstrate that gun rights supporters respond to school shootings by increasing contributions to political organizations committed to upholding Second Amendment rights. These effects are sizeable, with donations increasing by around 30% and donor numbers increasing by about 40% in affected counties as compared to the pretreatment baseline. (...)

• Second, the impact of school shootings on donations and donor counts is remarkably durable. Even multiple years after the incident, both donations and donor counts remain at elevated levels. Insofar as this pattern is indicative of citizens remaining actively committed to the cause of protecting gun rights, this highlights another difficulty in the struggle to enact stricter gun control laws. The time frame over which legislation is passed is medium to long term. Thus, while windows of opportunity might open the door for the introduction of new bill proposals, making sure that these bills eventually pass requires that gun control advocates collectively mobilize and remain mobilized over longer periods of time. However, gun control movements have historically struggled to keep such momentum up, and saliency usually wanes as the issue-attention cycle brings other issues to the forefront. (...)

• Last, the strength of these effects is most pronounced in states with weaker gun regulation. These states typically experience higher rates of firearm-related deaths and are most likely to benefit from gun control legislation. For instance, Kalesan et al. estimate that the introduction of universal background checks, as already existent in many states and supported by 92% of citizens in 2022, could reduce the rate of firearm-related deaths from 10.35 to 4.46 per 100,000 people in states without such a policy.

by Tobias Roemer, Science Advances |  Read more:

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