How the Parkland shooting changed America’s gun debate

2018 may have been the year when Americans finally started getting really, genuinely fed up with mass shootings.

In February, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida, led to a new movement — the March for Our Lives — advocating for stricter gun laws. But its work did not stop with a march and some protests around the country; the movement, along with other work by other gun control advocacy groups, managed to get major legislative and electoral victories throughout the rest of the year.

The victories could endure beyond 2018. Now that Democrats, who ran in part on gun control, have seized control not just of the US House but several state legislatures and governors’ mansions, they will have a chance to implement or at least push for stronger firearm laws.

What happens next depends on how engaged American voters remain on this issue in the years to come. While the aftermath of the Parkland shooting suggests that there may have been a shift in this debate, the permanence of that change is far from guaranteed.

Gun control has long suffered from an intensity gap: Opponents of stricter gun laws are willing to vote based on that one issue, while supporters of gun control usually aren’t. It’s possible that the effects of 2018 will fade away, and the nation will return to its usual combination of initial sorrow and ultimate inaction after mass shootings. But if the trends of 2018 hold and the gap really does narrow, it will mean that the aftermath of the Parkland shooting won’t just help gun control advocates win over the next couple years — it could be a longer-term change for America.

After mass shootings, it’s easy to look at the aftermath in Congress and despair: How is it that no matter what happens nothing gets done?

But the federal government is not the only one making new gun laws in America. The states are busy doing their own thing as well. And at the state level, a lot happened in 2018.

According to the Giffords Law Center (which supports stricter gun laws), 26 states and Washington, DC, enacted a total of 67 new gun control laws this year — more than triple the number of stricter gun laws enacted in 2017. The 2018 measures include a higher minimum age to buy guns, restrictions for domestic abusers, “red flag” laws that let law enforcement take away guns from people deemed a risk, and new urban gun violence reduction programs.

Some of these passed in states with Republican leaders. In Florida, the GOP-controlled legislature and Republican Gov. Rick Scott approved legislation that raised the minimum age to buy guns and added a waiting period for firearm purchases, among other changes. In Vermont, Republican Gov. Phil Scott signed gun control laws that included expanded background checks and a “red flag” law.

At the same time, there was a decrease in the number of new laws loosening access to guns. So Parkland didn’t just apparently inspire more support for gun control; it also led to less support for new, less-restrictive gun laws.

Maggie Astor and Karl Russell reported for the New York Times that NRA data “shows a similar overall trend this year, with gun control measures passed overtaking pro-gun measures for the first time in at least six years, though to a lesser extent than the Giffords data shows.”

There are limitations to the state-level measures. As long as some states maintain weak gun laws, people can simply cross state lines and obtain firearms in those gun-friendly states. This is a big problem in places with stronger gun laws, including Chicago, Massachusetts, and New York. That’s why stronger federal laws are needed.

Still, the gun control laws are significant measures that are now on the books and, based on the research, will reduce gun deaths, even if federal laws would have a stronger effect. And the big reason for that is the activism surrounding Parkland.

Of course, no one believes that what happened in 2018 is anywhere near enough to solve America’s gun violence problem. The bigger question is whether the Parkland movement had a significant effect on longer-term trends, which may over time lead to stronger gun laws.

When it comes to overall support for stronger gun laws, there was a significant spike shortly after Parkland: Based on Gallup’s surveys, support for stricter gun laws in March 2018 hit 67 percent, up from 55 percent in October 2016 and 60 percent in October 2017 (after the Las Vegas mass shooting). But that support dropped by October this year to 61 percent — still higher than it was previously, but not that far off historical levels.

So Parkland may not have led to a big, permanent boost in support for gun control — at least, not levels of support that are historically anomalous.

But if you look at the chart above, it should become pretty clear that there’s almost always been majority support for stricter gun laws. If anything, Gallup’s findings understate levels of support for gun control: When people are asked about specific policies, support climbs to the 70s and 80s.

The problem, then, has never been whether a majority of Americans support gun control. The problem, instead, is what’s known as the intensity gap: Essentially, even though more Americans support gun control laws, those on the side opposing stricter measures have long been more passionate about the issue — more likely to make guns the one issue they vote on, more likely to call their representatives in Congress, and so on.

As Republican strategist Grover Norquist said in 2000, “The question is intensity versus preference. You can always get a certain percentage to say they are in favor of some gun controls. But are they going to vote on their ‘control’ position?” Probably not, he suggested, “but for that 4-5 percent who care about guns, they will vote on this.”

This is where gun control advocates need to make some movement. And there are signs that there really was some movement following Parkland.

For one, a lot of people turned out to protest during the March for Our Lives earlier this year. It’s notoriously difficult to gauge the effects of these kinds of demonstrations, but it’s notable that the protests around the country numbered in the hundreds of thousands and became one of the biggest youth-led protests in decades.

Americans also seem increasingly fed up with mass shootings. According to a poll by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, US adults’ second-most common response for the most important event of the year, after the improving economy, was mass shootings. There were similar findings in 2017, which also had a lot of high-profile mass shootings. These tragedies are clearly getting a lot of Americans’ attention.

The other important indicator here is that politicians who backed gun control won big this year in the midterm elections. This was partly a result of a blue wave, since Democrats are simply more likely to support stricter gun laws. (Although some Democrats, particularly in more conservative areas, are still running gun-friendly campaigns.)

But it’s notable that some Democrats ran strongly on guns and won. Alex Yablon and Daniel Nass at the Trace pointed to Jason Crow, who won a House seat in Colorado, as “the poster boy for proudly pro-gun control Democrats in twin late-season articles in the New York Times (‘Bearing F’s From the NRA, Some Democrats Are Campaigning Openly on Guns’) and Washington Post (‘Suburban Democrats Campaign on Gun-Control Policies as NRA Spending Plummets’) summing up the new political dynamic in swing state suburbs.”

Equally important, Republicans who supported gun control also won. That includes Vermont Gov. Scott, who won reelection in a state that, despite its liberal reputation, has long been resistant to gun laws. And it includes Florida Gov. Scott, who beat Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson in the US Senate race.

In the past, NRA criticism may have ended both these candidates. But even though the NRA downgraded both of them in its candidate scorecards, they won their respective elections.

These midterm elections will have longer-term impacts. As Reid Wilson reported for the Hill, newly elected Democrats are planning to push for stricter gun laws at the state and federal levels in the next year.

Beyond 2019, the midterm elections showed that candidates can support stronger gun laws — and even focus a campaign on the issue — and still win elections, even in states that have been resistant to stronger gun laws in the past. This is a shift: Since 1994, when stricter gun laws were partly blamed for electoral losses, Democrats have often shied away from the issue.

It remains to be seen whether the shift on guns will hold in the coming years. But if it does, it would amount to a significant change in America’s politics — one that can be pinpointed back to Parkland.