State Legislation and Mass Shooting Prevention: A Twenty-Seven Year Study on Extreme Risk Protection Orders and Extreme Risk Protection Order Legislative Bans in the United States

Abstract

Within the United States, mass shootings have been an increasing problem that inflicts immense pain on its residents. Scholars have suggested that legislative action is the only way to reduce mass shootings. However the federal government has failed to pass major legislative change in the wake of major mass shootings, while on the state level, states have had better chances of proposing and passing preventative legislation. Based on this observation, I wanted to study if and when these laws are proposed, passed, or died to understand why states seem to have a better chance to adopt preventative legislation. I focused on one specific type of legislation, Extreme Risk Protection Orders (also known as Red Flag Laws, Extreme Risk Laws, and Gun Violence Restraining Orders), as they have gained popularity in the states in terms of preventing gun violence and mass shootings. This study specifically looked at the proposal, passing, and death of Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) and the proposals of Extreme Risk Protection Order legislative bans within the United States on the state congressional level over a 27 year period (January 1998 to December 2024). I argued that mass shootings, casualties, windows of opportunity, and senate/house political party majorities have an effect on if and when an ERPO was proposed, passed, or died, as well as if an ERPO legislative ban bill is proposed. Based on the time element I used a longitudinal panel data study and applied random effects regression on 1,350 observations per variable, made over a 27 year period within the United States. However, mass shootings are rare events and this limited the results. During the period, 40 ERPO bills were proposed, 20 ERPO bills were passed, and 20 ERPO bills died in the process. Also during this same time, 6 ERPO legislative bans were proposed. Based on the results, they showed that windows of opportunity have the largest effect on the proposal and passing of ERPOs compared to mass shootings or casualties. Democratic majorities, especially in the state senate, have a slightly better chance of passing an ERPO, while ERPO bills die more in Republican held majorities. ERPO legislative bans have more of a chance of being proposed when there are fewer mass shootings, casualties, and windows of opportunity, as well as when there is a Republican majority in both the house and the senate within a state. Based on my results, they gave partial evidence to back my hypotheses.