I think I have a chart that explains somewhat how red states can easily avoid action on gun violence. It’s the number of COVID-19 deaths vs. gun deaths in Texas. This is a state that pushed back very hard about any public safety measures for the pandemic, and that was killing roughly 10 times more citizens. I guess the question is “how many of which people will prompt state action? For anything?”

For comparison purposes, Texas had almost 600,000 registered guns in 2022 out of a population of 30 million, or just about 2% of the population if distributed evenly (source). This is probably about 20 times too low, since according to the Pew Center, gun ownership in Texas is about 45%. That percentage seems to be enough people to prevent almost any meaningful action on gun legislation. Though that doesn’t prevent the introduction of legislation to mandate bleeding control stations in schools in case of a shooting event.

So something greater than 2% and less than 45%. Just based on my research, I’d guess something between 10%-20% mortality would be acted on, as long as the demographics of the powerful were affected in those percentages.