When a fatal school shooting occurs in a US congressional district, pro-gun political action committees respond by flooding the affected race with campaign cash — and if the shooting happens close to Election Day, the spending surge is staggering, according to new research from Stanford Law School.
The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that pro-gun PACs increase their contributions by 31 per cent in competitive districts that experience a fatal school shooting. Gun safety PACs also ramp up spending, by about 20 per cent. But the real escalation comes when timing and politics align: when a fatal school shooting occurs within two months of an election, pro-gun PAC contributions spike by 2,820 per cent, while gun safety PAC contributions rise by 917 per cent.
25 years of data
Researchers Eric Baldwin, Takuma Iwasaki, and John Donohue linked 25 years of campaign finance records to every fatal school shooting in the United States since 2000. Using a difference-in-differences approach — comparing contribution patterns in affected districts to those in unaffected ones — they estimated the causal effect of school shootings on PAC spending in US House races.
A critical finding was what did not trigger the response. Neither non-fatal school shootings nor mass shootings produced any significant change in PAC contributions. Only fatal school shootings — events with the greatest potential to shift public opinion on gun policy — prompted the strategic spending surge.
Competitive races absorb the money
The spending increases were concentrated in competitive districts, defined as those with victory margins of five percentage points or less. In those races, the two-sided influx of money from both pro-gun and gun safety PACs effectively offset each other, producing no measurable change in electoral outcomes.
The researchers argue this is not a coincidence. The pattern — strategic timing, focus on competitive races, and the neutralizing effect of competing contributions — suggests a deliberate mobilization by PACs on both sides to either advance or defend their respective positions on gun legislation.
A gap in democratic accountability
The American public has consistently supported stricter gun laws in polling for decades. The study’s authors say their findings help explain why this broad public consensus has not translated into federal legislative action.
“While public opinion should drive policy change, campaign contributions are wielded to blunt electoral responsiveness,” the study states, describing the dynamic as a “gap in democratic accountability.”
The implication is that the campaign finance system functions as a buffer between public sentiment and policy outcomes. Even when events like school shootings intensify public demand for gun reform, the strategic deployment of PAC money in the most consequential races neutralizes the electoral pressure that might otherwise force representatives to act.
All data used in the study are publicly available, drawn from OpenSecrets campaign finance records and the Riedman K-12 School Shooting Database. The researchers have published their replication code on GitHub.
Source: Baldwin, E.A., Iwasaki, T., & Donohue, J.J. (2026). “School shootings and the strategic contributions of gun policy PACs in US House elections.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 123(9). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2514343123
