Published and Accepted
2026
Sensitive places, persistent violence: Effectiveness of “Bar Ban” laws in reducing gun violence near alcohol vendors. Social Science & Medicine.
with Diana Silver, Jin Yung Bae, Kevin Butler, Tanvi Shinkre, Falco J. Bargagli-Stoffi, and James Macinko
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Americans have differing opinions on whether greater regulation of firearms results in improved public safety. One area that seems to enjoy broad support is to limit firearm access in specific locations. “Bar Ban” laws—which prohibit firearms where alcohol is served—represent one such approach, yet their effectiveness remains largely unexamined nationally. This paper provides the first comprehensive evaluation of the impact of Bar Ban laws on shootings near alcohol-related establishments. Using a geospatial panel dataset of over 1.6 million alcohol vendors active across the United States between January 2019 and January 2025, we analyze the relationship between restrictions on carrying a gun where alcohol is served and gun violence. Results show that shootings occur close to alcohol-serving establishments: across 263,464 shooting incidents, the median distance to the nearest alcohol vendor was 222 meters. To assess the effectiveness of Bar Ban laws, we employ a stacked difference-in-differences design examining monthly shooting exposure rates of alcohol vendors across counties in five states (Hawaii, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, South Dakota) that adopted Bar Ban laws during our study period. Our findings reveal a policy puzzle: while spatial analyses confirm that shootings routinely occur near alcohol establishments, Bar Ban laws targeting these locations show no discernible effect on reducing shooting incidents. Thus, states adopting these restrictions saw no substantial change in county-level shooting exposure rates near alcohol vendors.
with Peter Larson, Jason Goldstick, Sawyer Stibley, Jaemin Jeon, and Douglas Wiebe
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Firearm violence is a leading cause of injury and death in U.S. cities. Weather may shape firearm discharge risk by altering outdoor activity and social contact, yet evidence on lagged effects and on the relative importance of daytime versus nighttime temperatures is limited. This research tests lag-associations of precipitation and temperature with firearm-related incidents in Detroit, Michigan. We studied firearm discharge incidents in Detroit, Michigan from 2021 to 2025 using police records with geocoded locations. We paired incident dates and matched control dates using a time-stratified case-crossover design and assigned daily precipitation and maximum/minimum temperature for the incident day and for each of the prior 7 days. We estimated exposure–lag associations using distributed lag non-linear models and evaluated whether neighborhood ecological characteristics modified weather effects. Among 4062 firearm discharge incidents between 2021 and 2025, higher temperatures were associated with increased odds of incidents in cumulative models. Associations with minimum temperature remained elevated across lag windows up to 7 days. Cumulative exposure to precipitation at the upper end of the distribution (95th percentile = 0.54 inches (13.7 mm)) was associated with reduced odds of gunfire incidents over short accumulation windows (0–1 days and 0–3 days), with attenuation and imprecision when cumulated through 7 days. Weather associations were generally consistent across neighborhood characteristics. In this urban setting, warmer conditions, especially warmer nights, were associated with higher odds of firearm discharge incidents, while higher precipitation was associated with lower odds of incidents over short lag windows. These patterns suggest that weather-sensitive opportunity structures may be important for anticipating short-term risk periods.
The Contribution of Alcohol to Violent Deaths in the United States, 2015-2022. Accepted at Injury Epidemiology.
with Diana Silver and James Macinko
2021
With Richard Fording
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Many studies have found that state gun laws that regulate the purchase and possession of firearms can lead to a reduction in suicide rates. Yet, the literature has primarily focused on the effects of state gun laws on adult suicides, despite the fact that some gun laws are specifically tailored to restrict the purchase and possession of firearms by youths. In this study, we estimate the effect of two such laws—Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws and minimum age laws—on youth suicide by firearm rates. Our sample consists of state-level panel data for 41 states observed over the years 1981–2017. Based on a series of negative binomial regression analyses, we confirm previous research by finding that CAP laws are associated with a decrease in youth suicides by firearm, especially among males. However, we show that this effect is limited to states that have adopted relatively strict CAP laws. We also find that minimum age laws serve to reduce the youth suicide rate, but once again this effect is largely concentrated among males. Finally, we investigate the possibility that these effects were countered to some degree by “means substitution”—the substitution of firearms with other methods of suicide. Similar to other studies that have examined this question, we find no effect of youth-targeted gun laws on nonfirearm suicide deaths. Despite the noteworthy increase in youth suicide rates over the last decade, our results suggest that state laws which restrict firearm access to young people continue to represent a potentially effective strategy for suicide reduction.
Just a Minor Infringement: How Florida’s Extreme Risk Protection Order Applies to At-Risk Youth and Other Household Members. Law and Psychology Review.
In Progress
Are Politicians Responsive to Mass Shootings? Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures.
with Haotian Chen
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The United States leads the world in the number of mass shootings that occur each year, even as policy making on firearms remains polarized along party lines. In the face of increasing violence and public demand for policy action, we ask whether legislators change their voting behavior on firearm policy in the wake of mass shootings. We estimate the latent gun-policy positions of 14,585 state legislators across all 50 states using roll-call votes on firearm-related bills from 2011 to 2022. Employing a difference-in-differences design, we find that mass shootings occurring within a legislator's district do not, on average, measurably shift their positionality on firearm policy. This null effect is robust across analyses accounting for legislators' partisanship, their geographic proximity to the shooting, and characteristics of individual shootings. Our findings suggest that even acute, locally salient tragedies fail to cause changes in how legislators vote on firearm policy.
Between a Rock and a Hard Place: How Lawmakers Absorb Pressure Without Taking Positions.
with Haotian Chen, G. Agustin Markarian, and Amanda Mauri
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How do lawmakers navigate politically perilous moments post-crises? We argue that when focusing events make ignoring polarized policy domains untenable, legislators face a tension between demands for visible responsiveness and the electoral risks associated with position-taking. To resolve this tension, they engage in salience absorption—using expressive communication to signal attentiveness without policy commitment. We study this question by analyzing how legislators’ discourse changed after 25 mass shootings using large language models to analyze over 2.7 million tweets from 961 state legislators (2013–2022). We find that the odds of tweeting about gun violence increase by 572% immediately following an in‑state shooting. However, the composition of communication shifts: legislators turn to expressive rhetoric rather than substantive policy debate. The shift is most pronounced among Republicans and legislators representing competitive districts. Our findings demonstrate how elites leverage symbolic communication to absorb pressure during periods of heightened issue salience, reshaping the classic focusing-events dynamic.