Sticking to One’s Guns: Mass Shootings and the Political Economy of Gun Control in the United States
研究发现大规模枪击事件使所在县共和党得票率下降1.7个百分点，并加剧选民和政客在枪支政策上的分歧。
Abstract How do events that highlight a policy issue impact political preferences? In this paper, I analyze the impact of mass shootings on voter behavior. I show that, conditional on population, mass shootings are largely random events. Using a difference-in-differences strategy, I find that mass shootings result in a 1.7 percentage point loss in Republican vote share in counties where they occur. Identification that relies on comparing successful and failed mass shootings yields similar results. Mass shootings lead to an increase in the salience of gun policy and increase the divide on gun policy among both voters and politicians. Democrats (Republicans) tend to demand even stricter (looser) gun control after mass shootings. These results suggest that increasing the salience of an issue may polarize the electorate.