Mass shootings produce only brief, recurring bursts of support for gun reform

Evidence

Mass shootings come and go, but their impact on public attitudes regarding gun laws is much the same. Immediately after a gun massacre, there is a small increase in public support for tightening gun laws. However, such massacres rapidly fade from public consciousness and legislative concern until the next rampage arouses brief concern anew. This pattern of attitudinal change repeats itself regardless of whether the massacres occur in elementary schools, high schools, colleges, theaters, shopping centers, churches, military bases, or workplaces. No public place provides people with safety from semiautomatic guns and their spray of multiple rounds of bullets. Nor is any particular group safe from random killing sprees in the public places they frequent. Gun violence is a form of threat where a few incidents can change the quality of life in society at large because of the unpredictability of the threat and the gravity of its consequences (Bandura, 1986). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1239

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Mass shooting support for gun control spikes briefly then decays until the next massacre (similarity 0.96)
• Mass shootings activate a system-level moral disengagement collision over gun rights (similarity 0.86)
• A few random shootings can terrorize an entire community (similarity 0.85)
• Mass shootings fail as galvanizing events for gun reform because opponents morally disengage (similarity 0.84)
• Gun-regulation opponents displace causal responsibility onto mental illness while omitting weapons’ constant presence (similarity 0.83)
• Attributing mass shootings to mental illness diverts blame from guns and masks political divides (similarity 0.82)
• Gun-violence apologists shift blame to mental illness to avoid condemning firearms (similarity 0.82)
• Risky products like guns create public fear and harm not caused by fashion. (similarity 0.81)
• A few violent incidents spread widespread fear through unpredictability, severity, and uncontrollability (similarity 0.81)
• A society can limit massacre death tolls by regulating gun design features. (similarity 0.81)
• Regional gun use differences produce conflicting moral self-perceptions (similarity 0.80)
• Weapons shape a person’s sense of agency by transforming their perceived power (similarity 0.80)
• Judging gun laws while exempting the deadliest weapons is a token test. (similarity 0.80)
• Magazine capacity and reload speed directly determine mass-shooting death tolls (similarity 0.79)
• Defending lax gun laws requires numbing moral qualms about gun violence (similarity 0.79)