Why the Political Paralysis after So Many Gun Deaths? SPH Dean Sandro Galea on conflicting theories

“Continuing the conversation in between mass shootings is the only way we are ever going to realize that the issue is the day-to-day cost of gun violence, with nearly 100 Americans dying a day,” says Sandro Galea, dean of SPH. Photo by Eric Levin

The slaughter of 17 people at Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High on Valentine’s Day was the 17th school shooting of 2018—less than two months into the year. The United States has the 31st highest death rate from guns in the world, with many of the higher-ranking nations being in the developing world and beset by gangs and drug trafficking. This prompts the question of why US lawmakers—who could enact gun safety rules that even most gun owners support—have so far refused to.

Among the theories are the political influence of the National Rifle Association (NRA), psychological numbing of the public after so much violence, and the fact that media coverage after each tragedy tends to go gentle into that good night, moving on to other matters.

Sandro Galea, dean of the School of Public Health and Robert A. Knox Professor, who researches gun safety laws, blames politics. But the question of mass shootings, he says, shouldn’t distract Americans from the more common occurrence of individual gun deaths.

“Continuing the conversation in between mass shootings is the only way we are ever going to realize that the issue is the day-to-day cost of gun violence, with nearly 100 Americans dying a day,” Galea says. “Insofar as mass shootings galvanize our attention, that is important. But we should not forget that Americans are dying, and twice as many are being injured, daily by guns, and those episodes seldom receive media attention.”

Galea discussed the why-haven’t-we-acted question with BU Today.

BU Today: Is it psychology, political forces, a drop in media coverage, or all of the above that have paralyzed action against mass shootings?

Galea: I think our paralysis is largely due to political forces. A special interest group—a manufacturers’ association, the National Rifle Association—has been extraordinarily successful in protecting the interests of its core constituency that, taken as a population total, is not very big. Remember that only a quarter of Americans own guns and that fewer than 5 percent of Americans own about 50 percent of all the guns in the country.

But the NRA and other groups like it have been able to make gun ownership an issue of ideology. The Second Amendment was never interpreted as an unfettered access to guns by all until the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision [allowing individuals to possess guns unrelated to militia duty], and that decision emerged as a result of decades of quiet advocacy that created a generation of judges for whom that had become normative. There are some interesting books to be written about how effective the gun lobby in this country has been.

What does research say about whether repeated violence makes the public inured to it?

This is a bit of a myth. About two decades ago, there was a debate in the psychological literature about whether more exposure to trauma results in inoculation (you become inured to it) or kindling (it results in ever more consequences). To my mind, this debate has long been resolved, and unfortunately, the latter is the answer. The more trauma any one individual is exposed to, the more consequences they experience.

Now, at the national, dispassionate level, yes, if we keep seeing shooting after shooting on TV, it becomes normative after a while, and we stop paying attention. The same way that we have not paid attention to the 34,000 or so annual firearm deaths that have characterized the firearm epidemic fairly constantly since 2000.

Does acceptance of routine violence beset other nations—for example, those that deal with repeated terrorist attacks?

Perhaps at the national level, but not at the individual level. At the individual level, each of us suffers more from more trauma, and it is in our collective interest to limit our exposure to traumatic events.

Does research suggest that people react to different forms of repeated violence differently? For instance, is the public reaction to repeated politically motivated terrorism different from Americans’ response to mass shootings by unhinged people?

This is difficult to answer. There has been some literature that suggests that yes, the reason behind the violence results in different consequences. I am not convinced. I think that that literature is misled by sampling differences. That is, it is easier to sample people who were directly affected by intentional violence (for example, we know exactly who was in the Pulse nightclub [scene of a mass shooting in Florida in 2016]) versus who is affected by a natural event (it’s hard to count all who were affected by Hurricane Maria).

So we have tended to sample people who are very much directly affected by intentional violence, showing that that type of violence results in worse outcomes. But in fact, we are simply sampling people who are affected by less severe exposures in the realm of natural events.

Bottom line: traumatic events have long-term effects on all of us, and in some ways, it does not matter what the genesis of the traumatic event is. If we experience injury or loss of a loved one or witness a horrific sight, we shall be affected regardless of the source of the violent or traumatic event.

Media coverage of last month’s Parkland, Fla., school shooting speculates that this time we might see legislative action taken against gun violence. Do you expect that to happen, and if so, what’s different about this shooting?

It is far too early to tell. Certainly, some unprecedented things have happened after Parkland, mostly in the private sector, where retailers have changed their patterns and some large companies have disassociated themselves from the NRA. That has not happened before. Parkland affected generation Z, a generation that is native to social media and that has been able to capitalize on that to amplify their message. Will it result in change? Hard to say, given the current administration, but we shall see.