The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-29)

SUNDAY, MAY 29 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ BD K B3

at the hands of older people.) Meanwhile, the research is similarly persuasive that “stand your ground” laws are associated with an increase in firearm homicides, and there is moderate evidence suggesting they also drive up total homicides after their passage. “Stand your ground” laws remove the traditional obligation to avoid using deadly force in a conflict if retreat is a safe option. Such laws have been popular in recent years, and by now more than half of all states have implemented them. There is less robust, but still notable, evidence for the effects of other laws. Since the mid-1990s, all states have required background checks for firearms purchased from a licensed dealer. There is mounting evidence that these checks decrease homicides. Al- though almost half of U.S. states have some form of “universal” background check laws, which also require checks for sales between private parties, the effects of these laws are not yet well established. There is also moder- ately strong evidence that waiting period laws (found in fewer than half of all states) decrease firearm suicides and homicides, and that laws prohibiting firearms possession by people with domestic-violence restraining orders — variants of which are present in most state laws — decrease intimate partner

rigorous evidence of law effects is available, policymakers and the public instead must rely on logical considerations (for example, is it plausible that restrictions on magazine capac- ity might reduce the carnage mass shooters cause?) and weaker evidence (such as correla- tions). The results of Rand’s regularly updated and ongoing review of evidence might be, at first glance, underwhelming: Most of the gun policy effects for which we sought evidence have not been evaluated or haven’t been evaluated well enough to draw strong conclu- sions from. The two problems — weak studies or no studies — are related: For decades, we in the United States have underfunded research and data collection efforts that could help us establish the effects of gun laws and other firearm violence prevention interventions. (In fact, for nearly a quarter-century, almost no federal funding was available for research in this area, for political reasons.) As mentioned, where positive effects are concerned, child access prevention laws have the strongest evidence in their favor. (Accord- ing to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 842 children younger than 18 died in firearms accidents or firearms suicides in 2020, and a larger number were injured, though some of these casualties were

mobilized against gun violence in the after- math of Sandy Hook, Parkland and other trag- edies have done heroic work, facing off against the full force of the gun lobby. But the survey finding may provide a hint about why these episodes of uniquely American horror have not translated into widespread changes in legislation designed to prevent the next mass shooting or the thousands of “routine” shootings that destroy American lives, families and com- munities every year. Research has shown that mass shootings lead to an increase in the number of gun-related bills introduced at the state level, but with few exceptions, they tend not to lead to the passage of legislation designed to confront gun violence. In fact, the sick reality of our gun politics has led to the oppo- site: In Republican-controlled state legislatures, mass shootings are associated with a large increase in legislation designed to loosen gun restrictions. To be clear, there is no evidence of a causal connection between Americans’ emotional response to this kind of incident and the behavior of state or federal legislators. But the pattern of policy responses to mass shootings suggests a link. In the days after the latest mass shooting, politicians express their outrage, their thoughts and prayers, and some put forth new proposals to finally confront the problem with

gered in the background. In a study published last year, Yinzhi Shen and I gathered data on all mass shootings from 2008 through 2016 to test whether Sandy Hook was an anomaly. We found that it was, in the sense that it affected the emotions of the entire country. But other than Sandy Hook’s reach, the pattern I noticed afterward was replicated when we used more refined methods to identify the causal impact of all mass shootings on the emotions of Americans. We found that the most horrific mass shootings with the most victims generate the largest impact on Ameri- cans’ emotions, and that the effect of mass shootings is felt most acutely in the cities and towns in which they occur, then fades quickly as the geographic distance between the incident and the survey respondent widens. We found that respondents who identify as Demo- crats have a larger emotional response to mass shootings than those who identify as Republi- cans — but, critically, Republicans also report higher levels of sadness and anger in the after- math of mass shootings, even if their response is more muted than that of Democrats. But the impact of mass shootings on the emotions of respondents lasts for only a few days, and then it is gone, indistinguishable from the longer time trend. This isn’t true for everyone, of course — the groups that have

The window f or harnessing emotions into action like gun legislation is small, says sociologist Patrick Sharkey

meaningful legislation. A few days pass, and the raw emotions we are all feeling dissipate, even if we’re reluctant to admit it. As the attention of the nation shifts, that legislation stalls, and the organized, well-funded forces that favor guns over children’s lives flex their muscles. For those who would turn the painful emotions of this moment into action, there are models for ways that states can create basic requirements to make it harder for violent people to acquire guns. Formidable forces have mobilized to make sure these models don’t spread beyond states such as Massachusetts and Connecticut, but anger and sadness c an be a driving force behind political and social movements for change. The right always tells us that “now” is not the time to politicize the latest mass shooting. If policymakers want to harness these emotions and turn them into policy, however, the time to act is brief. In four days the emotions fade. Six days have passed since the tragedy in Uvalde. Twitter: @patrick_sharkey

Patrick Sharkey is the William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. He is the author of “Uneasy Peace: The Great Crime Decline, the Renewal of City Life, and the Next War on Violence.”

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mericans woke up on Wednesday morn- ing feeling some combination of deep sadness and intense anger. The feeling was shared throughout the country. Americans are grieving. This is not a hunch from watching the interviews in Uvalde, Tex., or talking with friends, family and colleagues about the horror of an 18-year-old’s bursting into an elementary school there and killing 19 children and two teachers. I have seen it in the data. As overwhelming as the feeling is, the available evidence suggests that it fades into the background within about four days. This means we had four days in which to act on emotions at their most intense. Four days to take steps that might help prevent the next Uvalde or Sandy Hook or Parkland or Colum- bine massacre before we moved on, before we returned to the immediate concerns of our own lives — and before the urge to take on an intractable problem lost the emotion that can fuel momentum. I came to this conclusion after working with a unique daily survey conducted by Gallup. Nearly every single day from 2008 through 2017, Gallup interviewed a national sample of Americans, asking them their opinions and perceptions about a variety of issues. Gallup also asked about their emotions on a given day: Had they felt happy or sad the day before? Were they angry or smiling? Trends in the data show a remarkably consistent pattern. Almost every day, between 10 percent and 25 percent of Americans reported feeling sadness the previous day. What immediately stands out when these feelings are plotted onto a graph is the tall, anomalous spike in the middle — on Dec. 15, 2012, to be precise. That day, nearly 40 percent of respondents reported feeling sadness the previous day, more than double the percentage on a typical day. The number of respondents who said they felt angry was less dramatic but still significant: 20 percent, vs. 12 percent on a typical day. One day earlier, on Dec. 14, a young man had entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and killed 20 children and six adults before killing himself. The poll respondents were not primed to think about the massacre that had taken place in Newtown and give their opinion of the incident. They were simply asked whether they felt angry or sad or happy the day before the interview. The survey’s value is the window it opens into the way this kind of event weighs on our minds, the collective process of grieving that we all went through then — and are going through again, right now. Crucially, the survey also reveals when these events fade in importance from our minds. The troubling reality is that it doesn’t take long. Days after the Sandy Hook mass shooting, Americans’ reports of sadness and anger returned to their normal levels. This doesn’t mean we forgot about the shooting or no longer cared. It just means that we returned to our lives, that the horror of what had happened had moved away from the forefront of our con- sciousness even as the sadness and anger lin-

How long are Americans sad and angry about mass shootings? Four days.

CHANDAN KHANNA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSSE/GETTY IMAGES

People attend the vigil on May 25 for the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex.

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art of the deeply polarized debate over guns in the United States — inflamed, yet again, by the horrific events in Uvalde, Tex. — is ideological. A segment of the population rejects any and all regulation of these weapons as an abridgment of freedom; another segment holds uncompromising an- ti-gun views. But some of the arguments about how best to prevent gun violence boil down to disagreements about the real-world effects of policies that have been proposed or implemented. Are certain laws and regulations likely to improve or worsen public safety? These disagreements involve empiri- cal questions that can be answered with good research. At a time when many Americans are searching for solutions to our country’s intol- erably high rates of gun violence, social scientists can help provide answers — and, possibly, lead people of good faith to modify their views. For more than six years, the Rand Corp., through its Gun Policy in America initiative, has been evaluating the available scientific evidence on the effects of gun laws on a wide range of outcomes, including homicides, suicides and mass shootings. We have reviewed thousands of scientific articles to identify those that credibly estimate the effects of 18 different gun laws that are commonly debated in state legislatures. In particular, we have looked for evidence that these laws caused changes in one of the outcomes of interest — not just that they are correlated with these outcomes (because mere correlation is poor evidence of causation). Several policies, we find, do have substantial support in the scholarly literature — with child access prevention legislation, also known as CAP laws, or safe storage laws, boasting some of the most potent evidence about effectiveness. Studies make clear that CAP laws decrease self-injuries and suicides among youths in states that adopt them, and also decrease unintentional injuries and deaths. Yet only 19 states have such laws. Policies requiring firearms owners to keep guns in safes or other places where children can’t access them would not have changed events in Uvalde, but they deserve strong consideration by any legislators concerned about gun deaths. It’s an unfortunate fact that mass shootings are sufficiently rare that it is hard to establish with scientific rigor whether policies affect them — although some laws that reduce gun violence in general may also reduce mass shootings. Of course, we should not expect to imple- ment laws only for which we have strong scientific evidence. Often — usually — no such evidence is available. Even when it is, failure to find a statistically significant effect does not mean the law has no effect: It usually means the study wasn’t strong enough to say what the law’s effects might be. When no

What the research

s ays about gun laws

The divide o ver guns can be intensely ideological. B ut a growing body of s ocial-science research is showing which regulations work, argues Andrew R. Morral

JORDAN VONDERHAAR/GETTY IMAGES

Crosses bearing the names of the victims of a mass shooting stand in front of Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde, Tex., May 26.

homicides. Other policies — such as assault weapons bans of the sort the United States had in place for the 10 years after 1994 — don’t yet provide enough scientific evidence to indicate what their effects might be. That is not to say that these laws do not have effects, only that they have not been rigorously demonstrated. By some definitions, for example, mass shootings declined in the United States during the period of the federal ban, but because mass shootings remain, at least in a statistical sense, relatively rare, and because rates of mass shootings highly variable from year to year, there are methodological challenges to reliably detecting even fairly strong effects for these laws. Some people who argue about guns are simply never going to be swayed by scientific evidence regarding firearms policies, but many citizens and lawmakers are willing to take sound evidence into consideration. We have extraordinary levels of firearms violence in this country — but also research-proven ways to reduce it. Twitter: @AndrewMorral

Andrew R. Morral is a senior behavioral scientist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan Rand Corporation and leader of its Gun Policy in America initiative.

The Washington Post - USA (2022-05-29)

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