Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mass Shootings and the Gun Control and Gun Rights Movements

University Of California-Irvine, Irvine CA

Investigators

Abstract

Mass Shootings and the Gun Control and Gun Rights Movements PI: David S. Meyer Co-PI: Eulalie Laschever This study examines how the gun control and gun rights movements responded to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, and the policy impact of their efforts. The research will also attempt to explain why 29 states relaxed firearms restrictions, while 16 states tightened restrictions in the two years that followed the shooting. This study employs two methods of analysis. First, to determine how the gun control and gun rights movements responded to the event, the Co-PI compares two different cases to assess how and if two major national gun control organizations and two major national gun rights organizations changed their policy agendas, targets,tactics, and organizational structures between 2011 and 2014. Second, the co-PI uses qualitative comparative analysis to show why some states strengthened firearms restrictions while others relaxed restrictions during the 2011-2012 and the 2013-2014 legislative sessions. The findings of this study will be useful to scholars who study social movements, public health, state-level policy change, and professional political organizations. In addition, this study will contribute to public knowledge and discourse about social movements in America. This dissertation contributes to the academic literatures on social movement strategy and on policy outcomes by explaining how movement organizations respond to critical events and why laws sometimes change during the political debate that follows them. There is agreement in the literature that critical events are important for social movements. Little is known, however, about how opposing movement organizations change in response to such events, or how these responses are mediated by other features of the political context and by each organization?s own internal constraints. Similarly, scholars have established that critical events can shake up the political agenda and facilitate policy change. But we still know little about the conditions that facilitate policy change after such events, or whether these conditions are distinct from those that fostered similar policy changes before the event occurred. The Co-PI will conduct intensive case studies of two important gun control organizations and two important gun rights organizations about their organizational structures, targets, tactics, and political agendas between 2011 and 2014. To answer the second question, she will conduct fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to determine what factors led to changes in state-level firearms restrictions in the legislative sessions before and after the shooting. The researcher will compare the conditions that led to four different state-level policy outcomes. This dissertation has two objectives: 1) to detail how political organizations respond to critical events; and 2) to determine the conditions under which state laws change after such events. The findings of this study will be useful to scholars who study social movements, public health, state-level policy change, and professional political organizations. This study will also contribute to public knowledge and discourse in America.