Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

After mass shootings like Uvalde, national gun control fails – but states often loosen gun laws

Family grieves in Uvalde, Texas

A family grieves outside the SSGT Willie de Leon Civic Center following the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. on May 24, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

Poliquin is an assistant professor of strategy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Calls for new gun legislation that previously failed to pass Congress are being raised again after the May 24, 2022, mass shooting at an elementary school in the small town of Uvalde, Texas.

An 18-year-old shooter killed at least 19 fourth grade students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, marking the deadliest school shooting in the U.S. in a decade.

The U.S. has been here before – after shootings in Tucson, Aurora, Newtown, Charleston, Roseburg, San Bernardino, Orlando, Las Vegas, Parkland, El Paso, Boulder, and 10 days earlier at a grocery store in Buffalo, N.Y.

Gun production and sales in the U.S. remain high, following a purchasing surge during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2021, the firearms industry sold about six guns for every 100 Americans.

Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut was among the Democratic politicians who pleaded for action on gun control as horrifying details of the Uvalde school shooting unfolded.

“What are we doing?” Murphy asked other lawmakers, speaking from the Senate floor on the day of the shooting. “Why are you here if not to solve a problem as existential as this?”

Congress has declined to pass significant new gun legislation after dozens of shootings, including those that occurred during periods like this one, with Democrats controlling the House of Representatives, Senate and presidency.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

This response may seem puzzling given that national opinion polls reveal extensive support for several gun control policies, including expanding background checks and banning assault weapons.


In October 2021, 52% of people polled by Gallup said that they thought firearm sales laws should be made more strict.

But polls do not determine policy.

I am a professor of strategy at UCLA and have researched gun policy. With my co-authors at Harvard University, I’ve studied how gun laws change following mass shootings.

Our research on this topic finds there is legislative activity following these tragedies, but it’s at the state level.

Restrictions loosened

Stricter gun laws at the national level are more popular among Democrats than Republicans, and major new legislation would likely need votes from at least 10 Republican senators. Many of these senators represent constituencies opposed to gun control.

Despite national polls showing majority support for an assault weapons ban, not one of the 30 states with a Republican-controlled legislature has such a policy.

U.S. Texas Senator Ted Cruz said on May 24 that more gun control laws could not have prevented the Uvalde attack, explaining “that doesn’t work, it’s not effective, it doesn’t prevent crime.”

The absence of strict control policies in Republican-controlled states shows that senators crossing party lines to support gun control would be out of step with the views of voters whose support they need to win elections.

But a lack of action from Congress doesn’t mean gun laws are stagnant after mass shootings.

To examine how policy changes, we assembled data on shootings and gun legislation in the 50 states between 1990 and 2014. Overall, we identified more than 20,000 firearm bills and nearly 3,200 enacted laws. Some of these loosened gun restrictions, others tightened them, and still others did neither or both – that is, tightened in some dimensions but loosened in others.

We then compared gun laws before and after mass shootings in states where mass shootings occurred, relative to all other states.

Contrary to the view that nothing changes, state legislatures consider 15% more firearm bills the year after a mass shooting. Deadlier shootings – which receive more media attention – have larger effects.

In fact, mass shootings have a greater influence on lawmakers than other homicides, even though they account for less than 1% of gun deaths in the United States.

As impressive as this 15% increase in gun bills may sound, gun legislation can reduce gun violence only if it becomes law. And when it comes to enacting these bills into law, our research found that mass shootings do not regularly cause lawmakers to tighten gun restrictions.

In fact, we found the opposite. Republican state legislatures pass significantly more gun laws that loosen restrictions on firearms after mass shootings.

In 2021, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a new law that eliminated a requirement for Texans to obtain a license or receive training to carry handguns. This came two years after a 2019 mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso.

That’s not to say Democrats never tighten gun laws – there are prominent examples of Democratic-controlled states passing new legislation following mass shootings.

California, for example, enacted several new gun laws following a 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino. Our research shows, however, that Democrats don’t tighten gun laws more than usual following mass shootings.

After the Buffalo shooting in early May 2022, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said that she would work to increase the age for legal gun purchasing from 18 to 21 “at a minimum.”

Ideology governs response

The contrasting response from Democrats and Republicans is indicative of different philosophies regarding the causes of gun violence and the best ways to reduce deaths.

While Democrats tend to view social factors as contributing to violence, Republicans are more likely to blame the individual shooters.

Cruz, for example, has said that stopping individuals with criminal records from committing violence could help prevent mass shootings.

Politicians favoring looser restrictions on guns following mass shootings frequently argue that more people carrying guns would allow law-abiding citizens to stop perpetrators.

In fact, gun sales often surge after mass shootings, in part because people fear being victimized.

Democrats, in contrast, typically focus more on trying to solve policy and societal problems that contribute to gun violence.

For both sides, mass shootings are an opportunity to propose bills consistent with their ideology.

Since we wrote our study of gun legislation following mass shootings, which covered the period through 2014, several additional tragedies have energized the gun control movement that emerged following the December 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut. These include the May 2022 shooting at the Tops grocery store in Buffalo, as well as the Uvalde school massacre.

While President Joe Biden issued executive orders in 2021 with the goal of reducing gun violence, action in Congress remains elusive. States, meanwhile, have been more active on the issue.

Student activism following the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, did not result in congressional action but led several states to pass new gun control laws.

With more funding and better organization, this new movement is better positioned than prior gun control movements to advocate for stricter gun policies following mass shootings. Public outcry and devastation over the Uvalde shootings will likely provide fuel to this advocacy work.

But with states historically more active than Congress on the issue of guns, both advocates and opponents of new restrictions should look beyond Washington for action on gun policy.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 21, 2021. This article was updated to indicate there were 10 days between the Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas shootings.The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More

Just the Facts: Trump Administration Pauses International Student Visas
woman wearing blue denim jacket holding book

Just the Facts: Trump Administration Pauses International Student Visas

The Fulcrum strives to approach news stories with an open mind and skepticism, striving to present our readers with a broad spectrum of viewpoints through diligent research and critical thinking. As best we can, we remove personal bias from our reporting and seek a variety of perspectives in both our news gathering and selection of opinion pieces. However, before our readers can analyze varying viewpoints, they must have the facts.

Has the Trump administration put a hold on issuing student visas for this coming fall?

The Trump administration has paused new student visa interviews as part of an effort to expand social media screening for applicants. The State Department has instructed U.S. embassies and consulates to stop scheduling new student and exchange visitor visa appointments until further guidance is issued. However, previously scheduled interviews will still proceed.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Community Response to Disabled Gun Violence Survivors

A Community Response to Disabled Gun Violence Survivors

“What did you see once you got shot?” That might not be one of the first things victims of gun violence are asked, but it was the first question Access Living asked in a survey used to address and assess the many difficulties survivors of gun violence faced.

The nation’s gun violence crisis continues to be a significant threat to people’s lives, as it has claimed over 10,000 lives in the United States every year for the past 10 years, according to Gun Violence Archive. Only three months into 2025, there have been over 100 shootings reported in Chicago, and this will probably continue to rise, as in the country in 2023, on average, 118 people died of gun violence a day. According to the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation, for every person who dies due to gun violence, more than two survive, usually with significant lifelong physical injuries that they have to learn to live with, along with the mental trauma of the incident.

Keep ReadingShow less
Improving Infrastructure In Washington To Benefit Both People and Nature

The 50: Washington

Improving Infrastructure In Washington To Benefit Both People and Nature

The 50is a four-year multimedia project in which the Fulcrum visits different communities across all 50 states to learn what motivated them to vote in the 2024 presidential election and see how the Donald Trump administration is meeting those concerns and hopes.

Washington State has historically fluctuated between Republican and Democratic preferences. While it was considered a Republican-leaning swing state until the 1980s, the political landscape shifted significantly in the following decades. Since 1988, the Democratic Party has won every presidential election in Washington, consistently achieving victory by double-digit margins since 2008.

Keep ReadingShow less
House passes 1,100-page spending and tax bill, raising debt by up to $4 trillion

US Capitol

Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images

House passes 1,100-page spending and tax bill, raising debt by up to $4 trillion

Early Thursday morning the House passed H.R. 1: One Big Beautiful Bill Act — yes, that’s it’s official title — a 1,100+ page bill with large cuts to both spending and taxes. We know the big picture but little about the details because it hasn’t been available for long enough for anyone to actually read it.

This is the “reconciliation” bill, the first signature legislation moved by Republicans in Congress and President Trump. This bill has special rules that make it immune to the Senate filibuster, so it can pass the Senate if a simple majority vote for it.

Keep ReadingShow less