Determinants of Changes to State-level Firearms Restrictions Before and after the Sandy Hook Shooting

• In Event: 474 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 11. Moral Outrage and Participation

Abstract

By disrupting the normally stable political agenda, “critical events” can create short-term opportunities to advance policy initiatives. However, we still know comparatively little about the conditions under which states change their laws after critical events, and whether these conditions differ from those that resulted in similar policy changes before the event occurred. I use fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyze the determinants of state-level changes to firearm restriction in the 2011-2012 and the 2013-2014 legislative sessions. To do so, I collected original data on changes to state level firearms provisions, strength of state-level gun control and gun rights mobilization, strength of state gun culture, and other measures of state-level political context. I find that while the conditions under which states changed their firearms laws did not differ markedly before and after the shooting, the same conditions did result in far more dramatic changes to state-level firearms restrictions.

Author

• Eulalie Jean Laschever, UC-Irvine