Assignment: Professional Writing

Assignment: Professional Writing

Assignment: Professional Writing

When the Smoke Clears: Focusing Events, Issue Definition, Strategic Framing, and the Politics of Gun Control?

Anthony K. Fleming, University of West Georgia

Paul E. Rutledge, University of West Georgia

Gregory C. Dixon, University of West Georgia

J. Salvador Peralta, University of West Georgia

Objective. This article explores the strategic nature of framing following a focusing event. We argue that focusing events serve as catalysts for bill introductions along three particular causal stories prevalent in gun control policy: restrictive, punitive, and lenient. Methods. We employ a negative binomial regression model to investigate the effect firearm focusing events have on restrictive, lenient, and punitive bills introduced in both the House and the Senate. Results. Focusing events lead to an increase in restrictive, punitive, and lenient bills introduced in the House. In the Senate, however, focusing events lead to an increase in the number of punitive and lenient bills, while having no significant impact on the number of restrictive bills. Conclusion. This represents an increase in attention to gun control policy regardless of the causal story.

Firearm focusing events have become an unfortunate part of the American experience over time. Examples of these events include, mass shootings at schools and colleges, such as Columbine High School in Colorado and Virginia Tech University in Virginia; assassinations of prominent leaders, such as President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; and assassination attempts such as the shootings against George Wallace and Ronald Reagan. Although relatively rare, these events can become catalysts for policy entrepreneurs to advance their preferred policy solutions in the form of bill proposals.

The purpose of this article is to explore the impact of firearm focusing events on attention to gun control policy. We argue that focusing events serve as catalysts for agenda attention through bill introductions fitting three particular causal stories: restrictive, punitive, and lenient. In the aftermath of a focusing event, policy entrepreneurs use these causal stories to exploit the opening of a “policy window” (Kingdon, 1984) as well as to strategically counter opposing issue definitions. These efforts are made in order to redefine the gun control debate at a time of heightened public attention, which could potentially lead to issue redefinition and eventually policy change.

Using a negative binomial regression model, we investigate whether firearm focusing events lead to an increase in restrictive, lenient, and punitive bills introduced in both the House and the Senate. We empirically test for the effect of focusing events on the type of frame used in bill introduction by using frames in bills as a measure of strategic framing. We find that focusing events lead to an increase in restrictive, punitive, and lenient bills in the House of Representatives. This represents an …

?Direct correspondence to Anthony K. Fleming, Department of Political Science, University of West Georgia, 1601 Maple St., Carrollton, GA 30118 [email protected]?. SOCIAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, Volume 97, Number 5, November 2016 C© 2016 by the Southwestern Social Science Association DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12269