Kids, Guns, and the Challenge of Salience

Over the past few weeks, the country has been reeling through an all too familiar news cycle around yet another mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.  With much less fanfare and press coverage, the Centers for Disease Control released data showing that in 2020, guns were the leading cause of death in children.  As is usually the case in the aftermath of these tragedies, polls come out saying that large majorities of Americans are supportive of “sensible gun safety efforts”, and the media narrative is that government doesn’t seem capable of responding to these concerns. 

As I write this today, there is a glimmer of hope that there will be a break in the logjam of delays around gun safety legislation, but many advocates believe that, while any progress through legislation is important, we are not taking advantage of the broad public support to do even more.  We are having similar conversations now around other social issues including reproductive rights, and censorship of school curriculum where polls show a large majority of the public lining up on one side of the issue, but little response from the government.  This week, First Focus, a fantastic DC based advocacy organization, released a poll showing that there is broad public support for greater federal spending on kids. 

The frames that the media tends to put around these issues are that “government is not responsive to the people”, or “special interests overrule the public”, or “democracy is broken”.  What if the real problem with these issues, and many others, isn’t the government or the system, but the ability of these issues to spur us to action?

All of us have many issues that are important to us, but the issues that are salient are the ones that we take action on and drive our decisions and actions.  As part of our ongoing research with the Frameworks Institute, we looked not only at the public support of kids issues, but also their salience.  In the first phase of this project, we surveyed more than 1500 Americans about a wide range of issues affecting kids and their families, from universal Pre-K, to paid family leave, to expanded early childhood programs – all issues that have been “stuck” in the legislative process.  Just as was recently seen around gun safety legislation, most people surveyed were supportive of each of these issues.  We could look at these results and say that government is not responsive to the will of the people. 

Our work suggests something different may be at play.  While most American’s support programs for kids, they are ambivalent, at best, about centering that support in their actions and decisions.  As part of the study, a group of questions were asked to assess not just public support of kids issues but also their salience.  These included questions like “when deciding which candidates to support, how much weight do you give their positions on kids issues”, or “how would a candidate’s voting record on kids issues influence your vote”.  The answers to these questions showed a pattern that can, at best, be described as ambivalent with participants saying that candidate’s positions on kids issues or voting records are only moderately important to them as they make voting decisions. 

Our challenge is not that Americans don’t support good policies for kids, but that these policies are not salient to their decision making – especially their decisions in the voting booth.  What if we looked at our policy inaction on kids’ issues not because of government and elected officials not caring, but that their inaction reflects their understanding that we, the voters, don’t care enough? 

As kids advocates, we spend much of our time educating the public about the issues facing kids, and the potential policy solutions to solve these problems.  This kind of advocacy has built the broad public support these programs have today. 

What we need now is a new kind of advocacy – aimed at not only building support, but salience.  We need to elevate kids’ issues to the point that they are not only supported but prioritized and, drive peoples’ votes. 

Over the next several months, our research will be looking at new ways of framing advocacy messaging for kids that drive salience.  Public support of gun safety legislation, and all the issues we care about is crucial, but not sufficient in and of itself to drive real change.  To advance gun safety, and all the other policies that we know will improve kids’ lives, we need to find the ways to build the salience that drives people’s votes.  If we can do this our elected officials will have no choice but to respond to the will of the public and make decisions with the best interests of kids in mind. If you have ideas about how we might improve our messaging and increase the salience of our advocacy, please let me know at david.alexander@leadingforkids.org!