An analysis of online reactions to the mass shootings in Buffalo and Texas suggest that people are no longer looking to God for solutions to the US gun problem.
For years, mass shootings in the US have elicited a common refrain on social media: “Sending thoughts and prayers.”
The routine requests for divine intervention are source of frustration for gun control advocates, who argue action—assault rifle bans and new gun restrictions—are what’s needed.
Now, “thoughts and prayers” may finally be fading from the gun control discourse in the US, according to Mary Blankenship, a graduate student researcher at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and Carol Graham, global economy research director at the Brookings Institution, who have studied the online responses to mass shootings since 2017.
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