New research indicates media coverage of gun control causes a spike in gun purchases after mass shootings
The fear of gun control in the United States might be one of the leading drivers behind people’s tendency to purchase firearms after a mass shooting, according to a new study based on the information-theoretic concept of transfer entropy. The research, which appears in Nature Human Behaviour, is the first to demonstrate a causal link between media coverage of gun control policy and increases in firearm acquisition in the wake of mass shootings. … “As I went through the steps of my academic career at NYU, I always had in the back of my mind to find some way to contribute to research on gun violence, but only last year this desire materialized into a concrete effort that brought to this field of investigation through my experience in dynamical systems theory,” said study author Maurizio Porfiri, a professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering.
