Social integration and mass shootings in U.S. counties

ABSTRACT

A major theme in the sociological literature is the observation that social integration may provide protective effects against a range of negative outcomes in society, from poor mental and physical health, to elevated levels of crime and homicide rates. In light of these observations, the current study attempts to analyze the connection between social integration and mass shootings by drawing on two popular theoretical perspectives: social disorganization theory and social capital theory. According to the findings, elevated rates of poverty and single-parent households increase residential instability, while residential instability in turn augments mass shootings. Furthermore, a young population and ethnic heterogeneity dampens civic engagement, while civic engagement in turn decreases mass shootings. Overall, these findings suggest that the protective effects of social integration may help guard against mass shootings.

KEYWORDS:

• Social integration
• social capital
• mass shootings

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We use the less restrictive criterion of three or more victim injuries to identify mass shootings, but the more restrictive criterion of four or more victim deaths reveals a similar pattern.

2. Two of the three empirical studies to date include socioeconomic controls in their regression models (Duwe, Kovandzic, and Moody 2002; Gius 2015). However, virtually none of the socioeconomic predictors are consistently significant or are signed in a direction which is inconsistent with expectations.

3. Although it may be true poorer communities do not possess the type of social organization which is positively valued by society, at large, it is inaccurate to say these communities are disorganized. Communities with high levels of poverty often maintain stable patterns of interaction which revolve around a set of ‘criminal values’ (see Cloward 1959).

4. We also test our results using various mass shooting thresholds (e.g., two deaths, three deaths, etc.), but the main findings remain basically unchanged.

5. We also test all models using the natural log of population. However, we exclude this measure from the reported models given it is highly collinear with population density and it also fails to produce significant results when population density is included in the same specification.

6. Similarly, although not explicitly about mass shootings, the homicide literature also indicates that residential mobility and the ethnic composition of a community are important determinants of homicide (Parker, Stansfield, and McCall 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Roy Kwon

Roy Kwon is an associate professor of sociology at the University of La Verne. His research focuses on the fields of political economy, economic sociology, inequality and stratification, criminology, homicides, and mass shootings. His most recent work appears in journals such as Critical Public Health, Social Forces, Socio-Economic Review, Sociology of Development, and International Journal of Comparative Sociology.

Joseph F. Cabrera

Joseph F. Cabrera is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of La Verne. In a broad sense, his work is a systematic investigation of the concept of social capital and how it can be facilitated in groups, neighborhoods, and communities. To this end he investigates social capital in relation to the built environment, race and ethnic diversity, social network structure, inequality, and mass shootings. His current projects include a study of ethnically diverse neighborhoods in Los Angeles County and an examination of structural factors related to the occurrence of mass shootings.