The Relationship between Mass Shootings and future of Political Cooperation

Now to look at how cooperation interacts with the threat of mass shootings. My focus specifically is on political cooperation, for example, people voting for the same thing. Researchers from the University of Notre Dame published a study called Violence and Voting in the United states: How school shootings affect elections (Montoya et al., 2022) . In this study, researchers compared counties that experience school shootings, and their voter data. On this chart you can see the effects of school shootings on county level democratic vote share by election. As you can see between 2000-2016, counties that had a shooting show a higher percentage of democratic vote share. 

It's important to recognize that support for gun control has been increasing for a while now. People have been fighting to overcome their partisanship to achieve this shared goal. Communities are working to achieve bipartisan cooperation. No matter how you look at it this increased desire for cooperation sparked as a result of the mass shootings terrorizing communities. This chart quote shows an exert from polling in June 2022. Democrats, independents, and republicans alike show higher support for stricter gun laws. Independents increased from 56% in May to 67% in June. Democrats are at an all time high at 90% approval. And republican support is lying over half which is higher than during May. 

My prediction that cooperation will increase as mass shootings increase relies on an important assumption: That in the next 5-10 years mass shootings will continue to rise. To help explain this I looked at a study predicting the future of mass shootings in the United States. They predicted the rate that shootings will increase is 1.28 in 5 years and 1.29 in 10 years. You can also see how the number of incidents will grow each year. The researchers also calculated a pessimistic and optimistic prediction. In both cases mass shootings are still rising. The researchers predicted no end in sight. This is an issue that is not going away anytime soon