Guns, Money, and Mass Shootings

John Donohue: Now every year the industry wants to come up with new bells and whistles, so people will buy new guns and the fact that they’re getting more lethal all the time contributes to the problem of mass shooting. So, I do think at some point people will step in, maybe now that there is this rise in political violence we’ve seen with legislators attacked and killed in Minnesota. The attempt on President Trump’s life, and the killing of Charlie Kirk may focus people on this problem and push them to take some of the commonsense measures that can reduce the level of gun violence in this arena.

Diego Zambrano: This is Stanford Legal, where we look at the cases, questions, conflicts, and legal stories that affect us all every day. I’m Diego Zambrano, a professor at Stanford Law School. Please subscribe or follow this feed on your favorite podcast app. That way you have access to all new episodes.

All right, so mass shootings are rare, but highly visible events that shape our national conversation about guns and public safety. Every few weeks or months, news of another tragic shooting grabs our attention. And definitions vary, policy responses differ across the states, but obviously the stakes of this conversation are extremely high. Before we begin a brief note: yesterday activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University. It was a horrific event. Our thoughts are with his family. Obviously, violence over political disagreement is unacceptable. Today we’re staying with our planned topic of mass shootings and how campaigns and interest groups respond, but we’ll return to the broader question of political violence in a future episode.

So today we’re examining how politics operates in these moments of heightened attention: What donors and interest groups actually do. How do they respond to mass shootings? We’re lucky to have one of the country’s leading empirical researchers and my colleague here at Stanford, John Donohue, on the show today, joined by research fellow and co-author Eric Baldwin.

John is an economist as well as a lawyer, and is well known for using empirical analysis to determine the impact of law and public policy in a wide range of areas, including criminal justice, the death penalty, factors influencing crime, guns, incarceration, etc. Eric is a postdoctoral research fellow at Sanford Law School and an emerging voice in the fields of public policy, political science, empirical legal studies, and applied microeconomics.

So both of them, along with Takuma Iwasaki co-authored a paper, “Another Shooting, Another Contribution From the Gun Lobby,” that we’re going to be discussing today, where they find that the gun lobby strategically responds to school shootings by flooding politicians in impacted districts with donations.

Alright, so welcome John and Eric, and I want you to just give us a quick overview of how listeners should think about mass shootings within the broader landscape of gun violence.

John Donohue: Yes, good to be with you, Diego. Thanks for that introduction. It’s been interesting, differing trends in crime over time. So over the last 30 years you definitely see a pretty sharp downturn in overall violent crime, and yet one area where things are definitely moving in the wrong direction has been the rise of mass shootings. And everyone’s familiar with the most egregious ones going back to Sandy Hook in 2012, to more recent ones like Uvalde and the Parkland shooting. But the problem is unfortunately moving in the wrong direction from a public policy perspective, and there are things that we can do to address this issue, but what’s been interesting to me over time is even though the public strongly supports some regulatory measures that could impact this problem, there has been virtual stasis at the federal level over the last 30 years.

Diego Zambrano: And just to start with a comparative question, is the U.S. an actual outlier? Can you just give us an idea of the basic statistics there compared to other wealthy countries?

John Donohue: Yes, and unfortunately you do see these types of mass shootings everywhere, but first of all, other countries take measures to stop them when they happen and have been effective. For example, Australia actually had a worse mass shooting problem 40 years ago than we had on a per capita basis, but after a really horrendous mass shooting where I think 37 people were killed in Port Arthur, Australia, 12 days later, they enacted extremely stringent measures to address that problem. And it basically ended their mass shooting problem.

And around the world, the affluent world, there have been much more restrictive measures taken than … far beyond anything that’s happened in the United States. In general, the rest of the developed world has a much lower problem of this, but they also take much more stringent action to address the problem, far beyond anything that’s been done in the United States.

Diego Zambrano: And of course, this question of how countries react, how legislatures react is exactly the point of your paper that we’re going to be discussing. There is some data showing that you do see more bills in state legislatures trying to do something about gun control. And so we’re going to talk about that. But before we do, just two more preliminary questions: So on the comparative side, you mentioned the U.S. does look like an outlier, although other countries historically have had similar problems. Second, what about the power of lobbying generally? Again, before we get into the question of the gun lobby, what is your understanding of the current literature on how lobbying affects political voting? How legislatures behave, etc?

John Donohue: Let me turn to Eric on this because he’s the political scientist.

Eric Baldwin: Yeah, so there’s certainly been plenty of evidence in the political science literature showing that lobbying is alive and well in the United States, and particularly in state legislatures. And what we see is, in fact, that after large scale mass shootings in states that have legislatures controlled by the Republicans, there’s actually an influx of new bills to reduce gun regulation. And in states in which Democrats have control of the legislative chambers, we see a very modest increase in the introduction of bills, but a null effect in terms of the number that are enacted. So, the Democratic controlled states are not successful in implementing gun regulation, whereas conservative states are successful in implementing a reduction … or bills that reduce gun regulation, which is an ironic twist on the situation.

Diego Zambrano: Okay, so the reaction differs markedly by whether a state is controlled by Democrats or Republicans in general. But your understanding, just zooming out, is that lobbying, meaning political donations by interest groups, is a very effective way to influence how legislators behave, right? That’s generally your understanding? I think that’s the common wisdom, but there are national cases recently that have made people question this. We’ve seen the candidate that receives the most donation for the presidential election doesn’t win, actually. We saw that in 2016, we saw that in some of the primaries, and so some people are questioning the common wisdom, but you are reaffirming the common wisdom.

Eric Baldwin: Certainly. I would say that Trump and his successful campaigns in both 2016 and more recently are anomalies in the post-war period. Typically, whoever is receiving the most from various interest groups or spending the most, I should say, whichever candidates are spending the most, typically win at any level, whether it be presidency, senate or the house.

Diego Zambrano: Okay. Great. And then finally, yeah, go ahead, John.

John Donohue: Just jump in on that one point. There is also a tendency to front run. In other words, if people think you’re going to win, they want to give you money with the idea that they’ll get benefits as well. So causal relationships are tricky here, but the broader point I think is true.

Diego Zambrano: And then the final preliminary point before we get to the details of your paper is to just tell us a bit about the landscape of the gun lobby specifically. I think most people have heard of the NRA. And so, give us your broad understanding for listeners about what the landscape of the gun lobby looks like.

John Donohue: Yeah. So I’ll start off and then turn to Eric. But in general, over a long period of time, people thought of the National Rifle Association as the single, major player in this space. But over time, for a variety of reasons, the National Rifle Association has had their problems and their declining influence has been replaced by a large number of other entities trying to take over in this space, such as Gun Owners of America and other groups.

But in general, in our work, we look at the full array of PACs that make contributions either for gun interests or for gun safety legislation, and Eric can speak to those.

Eric Baldwin: And to reinforce something that John just said, the NRA is typically the interest group that has the most cultural cachet, the one that we most identify with the gun lobby. But just like John was saying, they face so much aggressive legal … so many aggressive legal problems in recent years, that their spending ability, in terms of campaign contributions has been significantly reduced, despite the fact that they are still the ceremonial figurehead of the gun lobby.

It’s these other groups that are more opaque and less well known to the American public: Gun Owners of America, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, Smith and Wesson has a PAC, a political action committee, and a variety of others, about 20 others that we see that dominate, and that form the gun lobby, and they do the majority of the spending. The NRA takes a back seat in terms of the spending right now. Not that they don’t spend, they just spend less than they have historically.

Diego Zambrano: That’s really interesting. So, I just want to summarize those three preliminary points again: On the comparative point, the U.S .looks like an outlier, and in most other wealthy countries we see efforts are reducing mass shootings and those succeed over time.

Second, lobbying continues to be quite an effective way to influence both elections and the behavior of politicians. And again, we’re going to talk more about that in a moment. And finally, it’s not just the NRA, though the NRA continues to have the most cultural cachet, as Eric said. It’s a bunch of other groups. So, this is quite a diverse area of politically active organizations.

Alright, so with that background in mind, let’s talk about your paper and the findings. Give us the headline, what you studied, what you found, and the key takeaways.

John Donohue: I do give all credit to Eric and Takuma for coming up with the idea of looking into this particular area to answer a question that I’ve long struggled with, which is: Why, in the wake of so many horrific mass shootings, has there been no effort to respond to them, even though the public overwhelmingly supports many gun safety regulatory measures. So that’s the big challenge. Why in the wake of a presumably democratic nation has there been a failure to respond to overwhelming public support for certain regulatory measures?

And what we see is that there are a number of steps that are taken by the gun lobby and their PACs. And what was interesting, I think, was to find out what were the types of events that they responded to, and one presumes that if they respond by contributing to various congressional candidates, it’s a sign that they’re nervous that their interests will be undermined if they don’t engage in this spending. And what we found is that mass shootings in general did not stimulate spending, and even school shootings in general did not stimulate spending. But if a student died at a school shooting, that was enough to engage the interest of the gun lobby. And that’s when they started to substantially increase their spending.

And of course, the spending was very targeted. They decided to focus on areas where these mass shootings occurred, and only in competitive districts where there was really a risk that a candidate might act in a way that was counter to their interests.

Diego Zambrano: So if I understand: you were motivated by this puzzle of there seems to be a lot of public support for some form of gun control, or some reaction, some legislative reaction, that will reduce the number of mass shootings. And yet we don’t see, at least effective regulation after mass shootings that, that actually help stop or reduce the number of mass shootings. Why is that? And your argument is that one of the key reasons that happens is that politically active groups that are in favor of gun rights respond to mass shootings by flooding the zone with money, but only when students actually die. And you were very surprised by that. So maybe give us an idea about … and I’ll tell you the devil’s advocate in a second, but tell us why that was so surprising.

John Donohue: There, there are a couple of dimensions there. First of all, at one point in this country, we did have an assault weapons ban in the country, from 1994 to 2004. When the law originally passed, the gun lobby was unsuccessful in stopping its adoption, but they were powerful enough that they could put a 10-year sunset provision on it. And when George W. Bush was running for president, he said he would support reenactment of the federal assault weapon ban. But the pressure from the gun lobby was enough to persuade him to allow it to lapse.

So we’ve actually moved in the wrong direction from where we were and my own work has interestingly shown that if you look at states that do have assault weapons bans and restrictions on high capacity magazines, and also look at the period when we had it nationally, those were periods of reduced deaths from mass shootings and overall injuries as well.

So, we at least know that measure is particularly helpful, but even broader: Something like 92% of Americans and, 80% of NRA members support things like universal background checks to keep criminals and severely mentally ill individuals from purchasing guns and yet, Congress doesn’t act.

So, for me, this really is a puzzle. What measures can you imagine that have upwards of 90% support and Congress is simply unable to act? So that was the real puzzle. And again this was Eric and Takuma’s brainchild to look to see where the spending went. I was surprised and interested to see that overall mass shootings didn’t bring out the gun lobby reaction as powerfully as deaths occurring in school shootings. So that, that seemed to at least suggest that in their mind, that was something that could motivate the American public.

Diego Zambrano: Yeah, I do think the conversation on gun rights tends to be atrophied and painted as if it’s, you either have gun rights or you don’t. But actually, as you mentioned, there’s a spectrum of potential regulations, including universal background checks where you get a lot of support, but it depends how you break down the question, right? If you wanted more stringent regulations, you would find less support for that kind of thing, and so that it would be less puzzling why you wouldn’t see a legislative reaction that really puts a more intensive form of regulation.

Maybe this is a naive view, but these are groups that are committed to gun rights. Why shouldn’t I expect them to behave like this strategically? Meaning they know that the media is going to cover mass shootings that result in deaths. The media doesn’t really … or doesn’t seem to pay attention to mass shootings that don’t result in deaths, and they know that they should only donate to help their politicians when there is actually a mass shooting that results in deaths.

Why shouldn’t we expect that?

Eric Baldwin: One of the things that we have found in recent months, as part of our research has evolved, is that, in part, they’re responding to other interest groups—the other side of the debate, the gun control lobby …. or gun safety PACs as they are sometimes referred to, who are also, in recent years, stepping up their spending, especially after the Parkland shooting in 2018, we see a variety of groups on the opposite side of the debate, including Everytown, Giffords, Brady, United, who are significantly increasing their spending in those same competitive districts. And as you said, the pro-gun groups feel that this is an important constitutional issue, that citizens have a right to bear arms, and that it is their duty to protect people’s right to exercise their constitutional right. And so, they want to counteract any effect that the gun control lobby is having in these districts to convince people to push their representatives to enact gun regulation, or to even vote for people who might support that down the road.

And one of the interesting things that we found in the data is that this huge surge of money that is flooding these districts from both sides, where both sides are trying to get the upper hand, the money actually cancels out, they cancel each other out, and it has no effect, no material impact on the outcome of the election, more so than what it would’ve been under normal circumstances, if that makes sense.

But then interestingly enough, in non-competitive districts, if one side or the other increases their contributions—which is rare it’s pretty rare for them to do that—but if they do, they can change the outcome of the election. But in the most competitive, where they feel on the one hand, the pro-gun groups feel that their agenda is vulnerable and the gun safety groups feel that there is a window of opportunity to enact gun regulation, they actually are just reaching a stalemate in the end.

Diego Zambrano: Yeah, that’s really interesting. That’s exactly what I was going to ask you. Now that you have active groups on both sides, are they canceling each other out. And so they, they’re reacting to each other’s moves on donations.

Is it also true then that the pro-gun control groups also engage in this kind of flooding the zone?

Eric Baldwin: Yes, absolutely. So we find that since 2018 … So to back up a moment, prior to 2018, we find that the gun safety PACs are far less active. It was a very one-sided topic, the issue of gun rights in the country in which the gun lobby basically dominated in terms of spending, but also culturally. But since the very end, or since 2018, excuse me, the gun control side has dramatically increased their spending by roughly 20% on average after school shootings in competitive districts. But when those school shootings happen within two months of a congressional election, they increase the spending by nearly 4000%.

Diego Zambrano: Got it. So, I want to talk a bit about kind of an alternative explanation for the puzzle that John observes: that why don’t legislators react and actually pass common sense reforms after a mass shooting.

And the alternative explanation to money is just ideological commitment, right? You have a really committed minority of voters, perhaps a small minority who really vote on just this issue of gun rights, and they will punish with their vote the legislators who attempt to pass gun control. So, it’s not about the money necessarily, but about this ideological zeal. And the vast majority of voters are not actually voting, although they would support common sense gun control reforms, they don’t vote on that question. Is that a better explanation or is that just consistent? They’re both important, the money and the ideological zeal?

John Donohue: Yeah, I think both are operating at the same time. Although, again, I would note that no one really thinks that a universal background check would violate the Second Amendment, except, perhaps the most extreme zealots. And such a high percentage of even NRA members support adoption of universal background checks. That it shows you it, it’s not simply zealous belief in a constitutional amendment. There’s something else driving it. And I would suggest that it almost certainly is the economic interest of gun sellers and manufacturers because the one thing that you can count on is if the NRA membership wants something and gun sellers think it’s going to reduce gun sales, we see the gun sellers win out and not the NRA membership win out. So it’s that economic interest that is really the ultimate power here in, in pushing for contributions and ultimately blocking legislative action.

Diego Zambrano: That’s really interesting.

And so related to that, can I ask you about the … whether the donations are coming from within the district or outside the district? So increasingly we’re seeing local elections nationalize, right? Over the past few decades, but even more accelerating today, right? The mayoral election in New York, actually most of the money comes from around the country. Is that true about the reaction of these PACs, so these are national PACs and they’re flooding local-level elections. Has that changed over time? How much the issue is national versus local?

Eric Baldwin: We see that the gun lobby, and the gun safety PACs as well, are hyper-focused on the specific locality of the congressional districts. We find no effect at the state level or even between congressional districts that are nearby where the school shooting happened. In terms of the PAC spending, that money is national in scope. They receive money from wealthy donors all over the country and rank and file members who give regular small donations.

Now, if you’re talking about individual donors to the PACs, those are from all over. They’re not necessarily increasing spending from individual donors in the particular district. Although in a future project we’ll be exploring more about those individual donors to gun groups.

Diego Zambrano: Alright, so I wanted to zoom out. It’s really useful to understand the landscape of all this. Now of course we’re seeing increasing levels of political violence too. And so John, maybe give us an idea of how we should move forward in reaction to both mass shootings but also gun violence in the U.S.

John Donohue: There are a number of things that can be done. As I said, I’ve been concerned with the increase in mass shootings over time and of course a lot of that is driven just by the increasing lethality of weaponry. If you look back to the time when there was an assassination attempt on President Reagan, the shooter there, John Hinkley, was using a six shooter, a revolver, and he managed to shoot six bullets, hit four people, and no one died.

Today, the weapon that he would be using would be a much more powerful weapon, potentially with 15- or 17-round magazine and as Hinkley did, and most of these mass shooters do, they usually fire everything in their gun. So, if you’re shooting, 15 or 17 bullets rather than just six, you’re obviously going to hit more people. And the lethality of this weaponry is significantly greater. In fact, there was a really interesting study done looking at who survives getting shot. And it turns out the more powerful the weapon and the bullet size that hit you the greater the likelihood that you will die from being shot.

So, it’s a growing problem and of course the industry is, is trying to do what Apple did for the iPhone, which is to every year come up with a faster shooting, more lethal weapon so that people will go out and make additional purchases.

It used to be that there would be a family gun that would be in the family for decades. Now, every year the industry wants to come up with new bells and whistles, so people will buy new guns. And the fact that they’re getting more lethal all the time contributes to the problem of mass shooting. So I do think at some point, people will step in, maybe now that there is this rise in political violence we’ve seen with legislators attacked and killed in Minnesota, the attempt on President Trump’s life, and the killing of Charlie Kirk, may focus people on this problem and push them to take some of the commonsense measures that can reduce the level of gun violence in this arena.

Diego Zambrano: Yeah. And we should take a moment to say, obviously we weren’t going to discuss political violence today, but this horrific killing of Charlie Kirk is a really dangerous moment for the country and it really underlines the importance of commonsense gun regulations.

So, what would you propose in the context of lobbying? Do you think there should be further limits, or do you have any other proposals of how you’d like to see the law develop in this area?

Eric Baldwin: One thing that we’ve been talking a lot about in our research meetings and with other members of the public is that the gun safety side, while they have been increasing spending, like I said, they have a stalemate in which ultimately, even though it is a stalemate with the gun lobby, it’s one that benefits the gun lobby because it maintains the status quo. And so if enough Americans were to support the gun safety PACs and to put their money where their mouth is, if you will, to use an expression, the gun safety PACs could outspend the gun lobby and effectively try to tip some of these districts, the most competitive districts and perhaps shift majorities, both at the federal level, but also at the state level. One thing that we’ll be exploring more in the coming months is the effect of this type of lobbying on both sides of the debate in state houses, specifically because a lot of gun legislation can take place at the state level.

And so, if in fact the gun safety PACs can outspend and outmaneuver the gun lobby, also in moderately competitive and not just the most competitive districts, perhaps we can see some shifts in legislation in the future and greater gun regulation at both the state and federal level.

John Donohue: Just to follow up on that, you do have this asymmetry as we mentioned earlier, that the positions that are overwhelmingly supported by the public are unable to be achieved because of this stasis in the electoral system.

And also, you see actions by many politicians today who are trying to leverage the fear of crime as a vehicle to stop any efforts towards gun safety regulation. So, for example, President Trump has frequently said, the murder rate is higher than it’s ever been, even though that’s completely not true. But the idea is if you can scare people enough to think, “you better go out and buy a gun” that, achieves the goals of the gun lobby as well. So, it’s an unfortunate time where a lot of misinformation is capturing the attention of the public.

So, one thing that I think is very important is much greater awareness of the facts about crime, rather than demagoguing about crime for either economic or political advantage.

Diego Zambrano: We’ll have to end there. Thank you so much to John and Eric. This is Stanford Legal. If you’re enjoying the show, please tell a friend and leave us a rating or review on your favorite podcast app. Your feedback improves the show and helps new listeners to discover us. I’m, Diego Zambrano. See you next time.