Texas church shooting: When will be a good time for the US to act on gun control?

Updated

One month after the largest mass shooting in US history, another shocking attack has left at least 20 churchgoers dead.

But if the United States is to stop horrific massacres from happening again, there is a narrow window of time in which to act on gun violence.

After last month's Las Vegas shooting, in which one man killed 58 people and injured more than 500, US President Donald Trump said it was not the right time to talk about gun laws:

"We'll be talking about gun laws as time goes on."

Likewise, other commentators told the public that pushing for debate on guns in the immediate aftermath of a shooting would politicise the deaths.

But our saturated media environment means the conversation moves on quickly — Google search traffic tells a stark story.

The phrase "issue-attention cycle" describes the way in which public attention peaks for a short time following an event, and then fades. The story becomes less talked-about, we move on, and the chance to make change disappears until the next time.

In years gone by, "media mentions" (the number of times a phrase was used in news articles or reports) were used to demonstrate this effect. But today we have Google Trends data, giving us an insight into what people are thinking about, minus the media filter.

When applied to terrorist attacks or shootings that gain global attention — for example 'Sydney siege' or 'Manchester bombing' — the search data shows the same story again and again.

If we focus on US searches following mass shootings, the pattern is similar. And searches for information about 'gun control' tend to be much lower than for information about the events themselves.

The only shooting to show a different pattern was the 2012 massacre of 26 people, including 20 children, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

But even the amount of public pressure brought on by the massacre of primary school students wasn't enough to force meaningful federal change on guns.

Perhaps after Las Vegas — the largest mass shooting in modern US history — there would be a huge public push for more regulation?

Google Trends data shows various spikes in searches for "gun control" in the United States over the past 10 years.

There was clearly a peak in interest after the Newtown massacre, but much lower peaks in search interest since then, including after Las Vegas.

Many of the other peaks coincided with then-president Barack Obama choosing to put it on the national agenda. Mr Obama signed executive orders aimed at restricting gun violence but could not get Congress to pass relevant laws. He grew increasingly frustrated after each mass shooting before signalling in early 2016 that it was up to his successor to carry the baton.

The Las Vegas massacre hasn't reignited the debate nationally, but that doesn't mean all hope is lost for those advocating for tighter restrictions on gun ownership.

The inability of the US Congress to deal with America's gun violence has prompted reform groups like Everytown to focus on smaller battles, with some quiet success.

They have their work cut out for them in the state of Nevada, where gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest country music festival a month ago: Nevada has some of the country's least restrictive gun laws, and the right to bear arms is included in the state's constitution.

Search data suggests public interest in the shooting — including the shooter's use of "bump stocks" to modify his semi-automatic weapons — has already waned.

But on a local level, the shooting has sparked a renewed push for action.

Nevada voters have previously backed compulsory background checks on all gun sales but the law is in limbo due to a veto by the Governor and the advice of the Attorney-General.

Less than two weeks after the Las Vegas shooting, gun control advocates filed a lawsuit against them both, insisting the law is enforced.

Elizabeth Becker, a volunteer with the Nevada chapter of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, called on the Governor and Attorney-General to stop "dragging their feet".

"[The Las Vegas shooting] was a terrifying wake-up call about why strong gun laws matter, and parents like me won't sit idly by as our leaders refuse to their jobs," she said.

"Our volunteers will be doing all we can to urge the Governor and Attorney-General to take action to enforce the law Nevadans voted for."

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About the data

The data for the first two charts is normalised to 100, meaning each peak shows the maximum interest in each search term. These charts indicate how interest fades over time, and should not be used to compare the volume of searches for individual news events.

The first chart shows worldwide search data, while the second chart shows United States searches.

Credits

Reporter: Cristen Tilley

Designer: Ben Spraggon

Developer: Josh Byrd

Editor: Matt Liddy

Topics: murder-and-manslaughter, unrest-conflict-and-war, world-politics, internet-culture, united-states

First posted