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Guns and votes: the victory of an intense minority against an apathetic majority
22 February 2018
Article by Laurent Bouton, Paola Conconi, Francisco Pino, Maurizio Zanardi
This column on the “gun-control paradox”—the fact that gun regulations continually fail in the US Congress despite being supported by around 90 percent of US citizens—appeared in 2013 on VoxEU.org after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary and was republished in 2017 after the Las Vegas mass shooting. Following the Parkland mass shooting, we are republishing it with a new preface by one of the coauthors. Editor’s note: We asked coauthor Paola Conconi after the Las Vegas massacre of October 2017 for an update on her research on collective action problems in arms regulation and political economy in general. Conconi responded as follows: The mass-shootings in Las Vegas and Texas raise once again questions about the lack of regulatory response to gun violence in the United States. The same questions were asked after every tragedy (Orlando, at Virginia Tech, Newtown, …). My answer is always the same: politicians respond to the interests of a minority of voters who are intensely against even mild regulations, rather than listening to a majority of the electorate who is in favor of gun regulations but has other policy priorities.
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Vox [6 October 2013]
Guns and votes