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Google looked at the searches for “gun control” compared with “gun shop” before the San Bernardino shooting on Wednesday and after, and found a stark change in what people were searching for before and after the shooting. .
Overall, “gun shop” has been a more dominant search over “gun control” in 2015, especially in states in the south. A few states in the northeast and in the west and northwest have more searches for “gun control.”
That flipped on Wednesday, after the San Bernardino shooting was reported. With the exception of Kentucky and Tennessee, there were more searches in each state for “gun control” than to search for a “gun shop.”
The flip to Google for gun control over gun shop also happened on October 1, after the shooting at the Umpqua Community College shooting near Roseburg, Oregon. It has not happened for any other mass shooting this year.
The top questions searched for on gun control reflect people looking for answers was “what is gun control?” followed by “why is gun control bad?” and then “why is gun control good?”
Specifically, the searches for gun control spiked in large, liberal cities. The top location searching for “gun control is Portland, Oregon, followed by Austin, Seattle, Denver, and Los Angeles.
