Scholars document that attitudes toward guns and gun policy reflect deeply entrenched cultures that overlap with ideological affiliations and party politics. Does exposure to dramatic events such as school shootings and protests regarding gun control affect these patterns? I explore two aspects of the gun culture: attitudes favoring (or rejecting) stricter gun policies and the number of memberships in a key organization supporting the expansion of gun rights, the National Rifle Association (NRA). I first argue that school shootings are significant triggering events that become associated with attitudes favoring gun restrictions. A second argument holds that while triggering events such as school shootings reinvigorate the growth of a gun-rights organization, school shootings that are also accompanied by gun-control protests will decrease growth in that organization. To examine these ideas, I combine information from national exit poll data on respondents’ attitudes toward gun policy with state-level information on the counts of recent school shootings, gun-policy protests, existing laws restricting gun use, and membership in the NRA. To minimize problems associated with observational data, the analysis of public opinion applies Coarsened Exact Matching techniques followed by analysis using mixed-level logit. The second analysis uses data on gun control protests, school shootings, and NRA memberships in states over time. Results show that conservatives (but not liberals) exposed to more school shootings favor more restrictive gun policies. The second, longitudinal analysis found that there is a significant interaction effect between increases in school shootings and gun control protests that diminishes NRA memberships significantly.

中文翻译：

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美国的校园枪击事件、抗议活动和枪支文化

学者们记录了对枪支和枪支政策的态度反映了与意识形态和政党政治重叠的根深蒂固的文化。接触学校枪击事件和枪支管制抗议等戏剧性事件是否会影响这些模式？我探讨了枪支文化的两个方面：赞成（或拒绝）更严格的枪支政策的态度，以及支持扩大枪支权利的重要组织——全国步枪协会 (NRA) 的会员人数。我首先争辩说，学校枪击事件是与支持枪支限制的态度相关的重大触发事件。第二种观点认为，虽然引发学校枪击事件等事件重振了枪支权利组织的发展，伴随着枪支管制抗议活动的校园枪击事件将降低该组织的发展。为了检验这些想法，我将来自全国出口民意调查数据的信息与受访者对枪支政策的态度的信息与州一级的最近学校枪击事件、枪支政策抗议活动、限制枪支使用的现行法律和全国步枪协会成员资格的信息相结合。为了尽量减少与观察数据相关的问题，舆论分析应用粗略精确匹配技术，然后使用混合水平 logit 进行分析。第二项分析使用了各州枪支管制抗议、校园枪击事件和 NRA 成员随时间变化的数据。结果表明，暴露于更多校园枪击事件的保守派（但不是自由派）支持更严格的枪支政策。第二，