On October 1, 2015, there was a mass shooting on the Umpqua Community College campus in Oregon. Ten people were killed, including the shooter, and nine people were injured. voxgov.com analyzed data from its database of over 20.5 million government documents, including news releases, official statements and social media posts to track the conversation related to guns in the week after the shooting.
The below graphs show the percentages of legislators discussing issues related to guns, such as “gun control” and the “Second Amendment” broken down by gender and party. For example, on the issue of “gun safety,” 16 out of 156 Democratic males in Congress mentioned “gun safety” at least once over the period October 1-8, 2015. In addition, 8 out of 76 Democratic females mentioned the term. This breaks down to 11 percent of Democratic males mentioning “gun safety” as well as 10% of Democratic females. Zero Republican males or females mentioned the term “gun safety” during the period studied.
The above numbers were calculated by dividing the number of male or female individuals speaking about the given term once or more in each party, by the total number of men or women in their party. Those totals are:
| Male (D) | Female (D) | Total | Male (R) | Female (R) | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 156 | 76 | 232 | 273 | 28 | 301 |
| 67% | 33% | 100% | 91% | 9% | 100% |
Two observations gathered from studying the data:
1) Female legislators speak about the issues related to guns, such as “gun safety,” “mass shootings,” the “Second Amendment,” etc. more than males, based on percentages.
2) The one area for which Republicans spoke more than the Democrats was on “mental illness.”
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