Racially Disparate Policy Responses to Mass Shootings

• Published date: 01 March 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10659129231209323
• Author: G. Agustin Markarian
• Date: 01 March 2024
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Political Research Quarterly

2024, Vol. 77(1) 297–315

© The Author(s) 2023

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DOI: 10.1177/10659129231209323

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Racially Disparate Policy Responses to Mass

Shootings

G. Agustin Markarian

1



Abstract

This study examines the differential impact of mass shootings on state gun policy restrictions and posits that victims’race

and ethnicity plays a pivotal role. Since the 1970s, pro-gun movements have exploited latent racial biases to oppose gun

control measures. They frame gun control as prioritizing the protection of racial minorities over the rights and safety of

White Americans, creating political resistance. However, when mass shootings affect White communities, perceptions

of the primary benef‌iciaries of gun control temporarily change. Utilizing a 30-year state panel dataset, the study

demonstrates that ten White mass shooting fatalities lead to approximately 1–1.5 restrictive state f‌irearm laws on

average, while the same number of fatalities among racial and ethnic minorities has a negative but inconsistent effect on

state gun restrictions. These f‌indings are robust to a wide range of modeling specif‌ications and when controlling for other

victim-level demographic characteristics. Empirical evidence suggests that legislators and gun control interest gro ups

display stronger support for restrictive legislation following mass shootings involving White victims but not racial and

ethnic minority victims.

Keywords

race and ethnicity, gun policy, policy responsiveness, mass shootings, state politics

Mass shootings have become increasingly prevalent and

devastating (Lankford and Silver 2020). Although the

federal government passed the 2022 Bipartisan Safer

Communities Act, gun policymaking has largely been left

to the states, where it is subject to local cycles of social

violence and mass shootings, resulting in episodic

changes. Notably, certain mass shootings, such as the

2018 Parkland, Florida, or the 2022 Highland Park, Il-

linois, incidents, led to a signif‌icant tightening of state gun

laws, while others in the same states, like the 2016 Or-

lando, Florida, or the 2019 Aurora, Illinois, shootings, did

not (Caputo 2018;Vinicky 2023). Since conventional

explanations like state partisanship or the severity of the

shootings cannot account for these divergent responses,

what does? State legislators involved in the policy re-

sponses offer valuable insights:

“The majority of the Pulse victims, the 49 people who lost

their lives at Pulse, they were mostly LGBTQ people of

color. Didn’t their lives matter? Why wasn’t the debate

about gun safety important enough then?”–Florida State

House Representative Carlos Guillermo Smith [D] talking to

reporters following the passage of the Marjory Stoneman

Douglas High School Public Safety Act (Caputo, 2018).

“I think H.P. [Highland Park] is considered a very safe

suburb. Also, there was a coalition of people that came

together that helped to fund the effort.”- Illinois State

Senator Julie Morrison [D] responding to questions about

why her bill banning assault weapons (the Protect Illinois

Communities Act) passed after six years of inaction (Vinicky

2023).

These informed observers suggest that the victims’

identities shaped advocacy efforts, issue urgency, and, ul-

timately, states’policy responses. In this paper, I test these

claims and contend that victims’race and ethnicity shapes

policy responses to mass shootings. I borrow from social

construction theories of policymaking and build off a rich

and bludgeoning literature in public opinion research linking

race and gun policy preferences (Berryessa, Sierra-Arevalo,

and Semenza 2022;Filindra and Kaplan 2017;2016;

Loyola University Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

G. Agustin Markarian, Political Science, Loyola University Chicago,

Coffey Hall 327, 1000 W Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60626, USA.

Email: gmarkarian@luc.edu

Higginbotham, Sears, and Goldstein 2023;Kreitzer and

Smith 2018;Schneider and Ingram 1993;Wal k er,

Collingwood, and Bunyasi 2020).

I propose that the gun rights movement, spearheaded

by the National Rif‌le Association (NRA), propagates

racialized narratives that frame gun control measures as

state protections for “undeserving”racial and ethnic

minorities and a threat to “deserving”White Americans

(Filindra and Kaplan 2017;2016;Schutten et al. 2022).

Coupled with political power disparities, these narratives

hinder politicians’willingness to intervene in gun markets

even as states face local gun violence epidemics

(Schneider and Ingram 1993). Mass shootings involving

racial and ethnic minority victims fail to challenge these

narratives.

However, the dynamics change when mass shootings

affect White communities. In their immediate aftermath,

White Americans are framed as the primary benef‌iciaries

of gun control, leading to increased support for restrictive

gun laws among co-ethnics (Berryessa, Sierra-Arevalo,

and Semenza 2022;Walker, Collingwood, and Bunyasi

2020). While shifts in public opinion might inf‌luence

policy responses to some extent, they are unlikely to tell

the entire story because gun policy often diverges from

public opinion, and elite preferences and behavior

dominate gun politics (Goss 2010;Lax and Phillips 2012;

Spitzer 2023). I contend that legislators, inf‌luenced par-

tially by their own implicit biases, are more likely to signal

support for gun restrictions if victims are White rather than

racial minorities (Butler 2014;Gell-Redman et al. 2018).

These signals open policy windows, increasing issue

saliency and inviting interest group activity (Canes-

Wrone 2001;Grimmer 2013;Iliev 2021). Reacting to

this opportunity, gun control interest groups increase their

lobbying efforts.

To test this theory, I utilize a novel dataset merging

information from The Violence Project and the State

Firearms Laws Project, creating a 30-year state panel

dataset (1990–2020) tracking mass shootings and state

gun policy. I employ a set of rigorous models that leverage

two-way f‌ixed effects, time-variant unit-specif‌ic controls,

and state-linear time trends to account for confounds and

differing trends. The f‌indings are robust when using new

difference-in-differences estimators that address biases

found in two-way f‌ixed effects models (Callaway &

Sant’Anna, 2021;Liu et al., 2022).

The f‌indings indicate that state f‌irearm policy is re-

sponsive to mass shootings when victims are White. On

average, ten White fatalities lead a state to implement

approximately 1 to 1.5 additional restrictive gun laws.

Conversely, ten racial and ethnic minority fatalities led

states to implement about 0.6 fewer restrictive gun laws,

although this latter f‌inding is not statistically signif‌icant

across all models and may be driven by pre-shooting

trends. A second set of models using newly developed

DID estimators shows that states experiencing one or

more majority-White mass shootings implement about

one additional restrictive f‌irearm law, whereas one or

more majority-minority mass shootings had no statisti-

cally signif‌icant effect on new restrictive gun laws. The

f‌indings are robust when controlling for victims’age and

gender, whether the shooting occurred in a school, and the

median income of the neighborhood where the shooting

occurred, and to a wide range of modeling specif‌ications.

The proposed mechanisms are supported by examining

legislators’rhetorical responses to mass shootings and

interest group lobbying behavior. Twitter data reveals that

legislators discuss gun violence more after mass shootings

when victims are White compared to racial and ethnic

minorities. Moreover, examining interest group lobbying

data from Follow the Money shows that gun control

interest groups increase lobbying efforts in response to

White mass shooting fatalities, while gun rights interest

groups are unaffected. Mass shootings fatalities of color

do not signif‌icantly inf‌luence interest groups’lobbying

efforts. However, whether legislators’rhetoric or differ-

ential rates of lobbying explain disparate policy responses

remains untested.

This study challenges conventional wisdom on gun

policy (in)action. By showing how victims’race and

ethnicity shapes policy responses to mass shootings,

this study provides critical insights into the complex-

ities of gun policymaking and the impact of racial

dynamics. Furthermore, this study extends the existing

literature in American politics that highlights racial

disparities in representation (e.g., see J. Griff‌inetal.

2019;J.D.Griff‌in and Newman 2008;Hajnal and

Trounstine 2013) by looking beyond the public

opinion-policy link. By demonstrating that state leg-

islators, interest groups, and policies in the United

States are more responsive to disasters when victims are

White rather than people of color, this research un-

derscores the need to address biases inf‌luencing the

policymaking process in the United States.

Racial Resentment and Gun Politics

Throughout American history, the relationship between

gun policy and race has been intricate and evolving. In the

past, White Americans could protect their right to bear

arms while simultaneously disarming people of color,

whom they perceived as threats to their lives and property

(Cramer 1994;Satia 2019;Tahmassebi 1991). This

strategy maximized White safety and rights but subju-

gated people of color. More recently, greater federal en-

forcement of the equal protection clause and changing

social norms prevent the implementation of explicitly

racist gun control laws. Still, racial sentiments shape gun

298 Political Research Quarterly 77(1)