Citation

Reny TT, Newman BJ, Holbein JB, Hassell HJG. PNAS Nexus 2023; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, National Academy of Sciences (USA), Publisher Oxford University Press)

DOI

10.1093/pnasnexus/pgad407

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

As public mass shootings continue to plague the United States, a growing scholarly literature seeks to understand the political effects of these tragic events. This literature, however, focuses on public opinion or turnout and vote choice, leaving open to question whether or not public mass shootings affect a range of other important actions citizens may take to engage with gun policy. Leveraging the as-good-as random timing of high-publicity public mass shootings over the past decade and an immense array of publicly available and proprietary data, we demonstrate that these events consistently cause surges in public engagement with gun policy--including internet searches, streaming documentaries, discussion on social media, signing petitions, and donating to PACs. Importantly, we document the behaviors where shootings induce polarizing upswings in engagement and those where upswings skew towards gun control. Finally, we demonstrate that low-publicity shootings largely exert little-to-no effect on our outcomes.

Language: en