Communities that experience mass shootings drink more alcohol in the aftermath, a new study finds

Public mass shootings in the United States increase alcohol sales in the affected communities for years afterward, according to new research from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

The findings, published this week in the journal PNAS Nexus, add to the evidence that mass shootings have lasting effects on health that reach far beyond the lives of those directly involved.

“Alcohol is a pretty classic American approach to dealing with distress,” says Nick Buttrick, the UW–Madison psychology professor who led the study. “When we’re not feeling great, people drink.”

The study covers 326 mass shootings, defined by the FBI as the intentional killing of four or more people in a 24-hour period, from 2006 to 2019. The researchers matched the shootings with Nielsen Retail Scanner data on alcohol sales, which include the weekly beer, wine and liquor purchases in the majority of retail outlets (excluding places like bars and restaurants). The study analyzed these sales within the ZIP-3 zone around each shooting — a contiguous area that includes all the ZIP codes beginning with the same first three digits. On average, a ZIP-3 includes about 350,000 people and covers about 3,000 square miles.

For two years following each mass shooting, weekly alcohol sales increased about 3.5% in the ZIP-3 area where the shootings occurred. But there was no increase in communities following mass shootings in private settings or homes. For the 121 mass shootings that happened in public places, weekly alcohol purchases rose an average of 5.5% over the next two years — and stayed elevated in many cases for years beyond that.

“The distinction between public and private shootings is really important,” Buttrick says. “It’s not something in the air that spreads this distress from person to person. A mass shooting has effects on the community in as much as the community knows about it.”

Picking apart the ways different types of violence affect communities is an important step to mitigating their damage. Other studies have shown mass shootings increase antidepressant use among kids and emergency room visits for stress in their communities. Increased alcohol use puts its own personal and public health pressures on a community, including acting as “an accelerant for violence, especially firearm-related violence,” the study authors point out.

“Because alcohol is freely available, we’re looking at a behavior change that can happen quickly and easily in response to distress. And we can see the difference in that behavior depending on different kinds of exposure to mass shootings,” Buttrick says. “If we want to figure out how to intervene and how to help communities heal, knowing how these happen and why is really important.”

UW–Madison postdoctoral researcher Sosuke Okada and recent doctoral graduate Shiyu Yang co-authored the study with Buttrick. The researchers are also interested in quantifying the effect of media coverage on public health following mass shootings, as well as uncovering other community effects of mass violence.