UC San Diego

Why did the 2018 mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, lead to immediate state gun policy reforms while the 2016 mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, did not affect state gun laws? This dissertation offers an answer to this puzzle by studying how victims’ race and ethnicity moderate policy responses to catastrophic events, crises, and disasters. I argue that the government in the United States is more likely to respond to crises and disasters compassionately and effectively when victims are white rather than racial and ethnic minorities. I contend that biased post-crisis narratives and differential responses by predominately white influential actors lead to these disparate policy responses. I test this theory by studying state legislators’ reactions to mass shootings.Chapter 2 investigates how mass shooting victims’ race and ethnicity shape state legislators’ post-crisis narratives, analyzing legislators’ tweets posted before and after mass shootings. I find that legislators are more likely to use gun policy-oriented language and call for legislative action to address gun violence when mass shooting victims are white but not when they are racial and ethnic minorities, lending support to the proposed causal mechanism. Chapter 3 studies state legislators’ efforts to change gun laws after mass shootings by leveraging an original state legislator panel dataset that tracks gun legislation sponsorship. Democratic legislators and legislators with larger white constituencies successfully sponsor more gun laws in response to white mass shooting fatalities but not in response to fatalities of color. Republicans successfully sponsor more gun laws in response to mass shooting fatalities of color, but these laws may not represent the interests of racial and ethnic minorities. Chapter 4 studies the impact of mass shootings directly on gun policy change using a unique 30-year state panel dataset. Each white mass shooting fatality leads to 0.16 new restrictive gun laws that year, but racial and ethnic minority mass shooting fatalities do not affect gun policy change. These disparate responses are most visible in Democrat-controlled states. This research informs our understanding of political representation, crisis responsiveness, and framing effects, highlighting an ill in our democratic process that speaks to biased government responses to other disasters, crises, and catastrophic events.