Whenever there's a high-profile mass shooting, there's inevitably going to be a debate about gun rights in America. The Left latches onto the debate to push gun control and is easily convinced that now, they'll get their way.
For that to happen, though, they need votes, and a new study shows why that hasn't happened.
See, most regular voters already have a stance on the issue of gun rights. They're not going to get swayed one way or another by some event. They've been part of the debates already and know where they stand.
So, what Democrats need are new voters to turn out, and considering the outrage after these incidents, it's amazing that the Left isn't running everything right now. Why aren't they?
Because, according to the study and based on turnout changes, most people aren't that worked up:
Mass shootings can spur higher voter turnout in nearby communities, but the effect is highly localized and doesn’t appear to change how people vote for president, according to new findings from researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
The study, published today in Science Advances, analyzed whether mass shootings motivate Americans to vote—and if they change whom voters support at the polls.
“Mass shootings boost turnout generally, but especially in deeply blue areas [and] without changing minds,” says Kelsey Shoub, associate professor of public policy at UMass Amherst. “However, they do seem to move the needle on very specific gun-reform ballot initiatives.”
Using data from the Gun Violence Archive and nearly half a billion individual voter records, Shoub and Kevin Morris, senior research fellow at the Brennan Center, built one of the most detailed datasets yet to study this question. They compared turnout in neighborhoods located within 10 miles of mass shootings that occurred shortly before or after the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
The results show mass shootings “mobilize local voters,” but their effects are limited in scope. Turnout surged by up to 10 percentage points in neighborhoods located within a half mile of a shooting in the weeks before an election. However, that boost disappeared beyond about five miles, indicating that the impact of mass violence on political behavior is highly localized.
Interestingly, the increase in turnout is typical in Democratic neighborhoods. In Republican neighborhoods, there's no change at all.
Now, the researchers did try to salvage things for the anti-gun Left by saying there does tend to be more support for gun control initiatives, but to support that, they looked at a measure in California. I'm pretty sure that's far from indicative of anything about the rest of the country.
In fairness, the study isn't exactly a strong indicator of all that much beyond the minimal lack of an increase in voter turnout after shootings. One issue is using numbers from the Gun Violence Archive, which uses an overly broad definition of "mass shootings" that artificially increases the number of such crimes by orders of magnitude.
Still, if you're only seeing hyper-local increases in voter turnout when a shooting happens within a week of a shooting, that's a pretty good indicator that most people just don't care all that much.
Mass murders are rare and present a complicated issue, which anti-gunners try to leverage into political change at every opportunity, all while decrying any move from pro-gun organizations to do the same.
I'm sure Democrats will be sure to change their tactics accordingly.
In similarly accurate news, Hillary Clinton has joined the Trump administration.