How Sandy Hook helped alter the gun-control conversation: more state and local gun-control laws in the last 7 years

A snapshot of the range of gun-control laws in the states as of 2018.
(Business Insider map; click to enlarge it)

It's been seven years and two days since 26 people — 20 of them children — were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The shooting was so shocking that it touched off a major shift in the national conversation about gun control and has led to new laws in many states and localities, Reid Wilson reports for The Hill.

"In the years since Sandy Hook, 21 state legislatures have expanded background-check requirements on various types of gun sales," Wilson reports. "Seventeen states, mostly those controlled by Democrats, have passed red-flag laws that allow law enforcement to take guns away from someone who may pose a danger to themselves or others. And 28 states have enacted laws requiring those convicted of domestic abuse to give up their firearms."

The move toward more gun-control measures has also sparked pro-gun rights measures in more conservative states and localities. "Several states have passed measures expanding the right to carry concealed firearms, even without a permit, and others are moving to allow firearms on school grounds as part of a response to mass shootings," Wilson reports. "In the last seven years, the NRA counts more than 460 pro-gun measures that have passed state legislatures."

The biggest change is that guns are no longer the "third rail of American politics," Wilson writes. Gun control used to be mainly a rural vs. urban issue, and Reid notes that rural Democrats were once the source of some of the most vehement gun-rights legislation. But gun control has become increasingly a partisan issue over the past few decades, and these days, "backing stricter gun laws, once a sure path to defeat in rural and suburban communities, has become a winning issue — or at least a neutral issue — for some candidates."

That might have to do with the increased political spending from anti-gun and gun-safety groups as the NRA becomes less popular (and has less money to spend on lobbying). "In 2018, gun-control groups spent more than the NRA on campaigns and elections for the first time in recent memory," Wilson reports. "The following year, those groups outspent the NRA by a huge margin in Virginia, home of the NRA’s headquarters."