pew research on gun control

Polling is clear: Americans want gun control

Politicians diverge from voters when it comes to preventing gun deaths.

by Rani Molla

The massacre of children at an elementary school in Texas is adding fresh urgency to the conversation about gun control in the United States, which has been politically fraught and lacking in progress. That’s not because of a lack of support for gun control. That support just needs a little bit of parsing.

To be clear: Americans’ views about guns are complicated, and vary significantly by political party and geography. Overall, the vast majority of Americans support the right for private citizens to own guns, and more than 40 percent of households own at least one firearm. That doesn’t mean they’re against tighter rules on their guns. Nearly three-quarters of Americans think that gun violence is a big or moderately big problem, according to a survey last year by Pew Research Center . And a majority of Americans think that the epidemic of school shootings could be stopped with drastic changes in legislation, according to a poll this week by YouGov .

Still, when Americans are asked broadly if they support stricter gun laws, their opinions volley back and forth, and it’s hard to see a consistent majority. Slightly more than half (52 percent) of Americans in a Gallup poll last year said laws regarding firearms sales should be stricter — a number that has actually gone down in recent years — and a Quinnipiac poll last year found that just under half (45 percent) support stricter gun laws. More recently, a Politico/Morning Consult poll last week found that 59 percent of registered voters think it’s very important (41 percent) or somewhat important (18 percent) for lawmakers to pass stricter gun laws.

But these might not be the right things for pollsters to be asking. That’s because of how drastically existing gun laws vary state by state.

“The thing about those sort of generic questions: Somebody in Vermont can say yes and someone in California can say no, and they favor the exact same thing,” Chris Poliquin, an assistant professor at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, who studies gun legislation after mass shootings, told Recode.

When asking Americans about their opinions on more specific gun policies, the results are clearer. A vast majority of Americans supports universal background checks, keeping people with serious mental health issues from buying guns, bans on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, and so-called “red flag laws” that would allow police and family members to seek court orders to temporarily take guns away from those considered a risk to themselves and others. A majority of Americans, of both political parties, oppose carrying concealed weapons without a permit.

In the wake of tragedies like last week’s Uvalde, Texas, mass shooting , in which 19 children and two teachers were murdered at an elementary school, there have always been calls for stricter national gun legislation, but those measures rarely pass and are often very modest when they do pass. That said, federal gun laws — which are much more popular among Democrats than Republicans — remain a particularly high priority, since many of the guns used in crimes come from states with looser gun laws .

There’s much more action at the state level, but it doesn’t typically end with progress. Poliquin’s research found that state legislatures consider 15 percent more firearm bills in the year after a mass shooting, although the existence of more bills doesn’t typically lead to stricter gun laws . In fact, Republican legislatures pass more gun-related legislation in the wake of mass shootings — but they’re laws that make gun laws less strict.

America’s increased polarization makes things difficult .

“A lot of those [gun control measures] are actually supported in the abstract by gun owners, but often not in practice,” Matthew Lacombe, an assistant professor at Barnard and author of Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force, told Recode . “ So people have a particular issue stance, but then that issue becomes salient and Democratic and Republican politicians start taking clear stances on it. And then people’s views tend to fall into line to match their partisan outlooks.”

Part of the issue is that Americans have somewhat conflicting stances on gun control. But what’s a bigger problem is that even when a majority of Americans agree, a simple majority of lawmakers agreeing on a bill is not enough to pass laws in our country. The Senate filibuster lets a minority of states — and Americans — veto national policy that the majority of Americans want. The result is a minority of people making the laws for the majority of Americans, regardless of what the population at large thinks.

Background checks

Background checks are by far the least controversial aspect of gun legislation, according to a whole lot of surveys . Roughly 80 to 90 percent of Americans support universal background checks, which would mean all sellers would have to verify that a person doesn’t have a history of violent crime or domestic abuse before they can buy a gun. As Robin Lloyd, managing director of the gun control advocacy group Giffords, put it, “Background checks on every gun sale polls higher than people who support ice cream.”

That overwhelmingly broad support, however, has not led to sweeping national requirements for background checks. There are currently laws requiring extended background checks for all people who buy guns in 21 states , but federal law only covers sales between federally licensed dealers. That means there’s a loophole in which about a fifth of gun sales — sold privately, online, and at gun shows — are done without that oversight. Even states that have expanded laws suffer from an influx of guns from those that don’t.

Of course, many mass shooters would have no trouble passing a background check. The 18-year-old Uvalde shooter, for instance, legally purchased his guns. The Buffalo shooter bought his guns legally . The Parkland shooter did . The list goes on . Still, according to a 2020 study , the odds of mass shootings are 60 percent lower in states with laws requiring permits for firearms — and, by extension, background checks.

Notably, many of these killers are young and don’t yet have a record. After the Parkland shooting in 2018, there was massive support for raising the legal age for buying a firearm from 18 to 21. Universal background checks are one of those rare issues that both Republicans (70 percent) and Democrats (92 percent) support, but partisanship in other areas keeps it from going anywhere. Republican senators would have to cross the aisle to vote for gun control laws — a move that would likely hurt them in their state primaries.

The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021 , or HR 8, which would close the background check loophole, was sketched out in rough form after the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre a decade ago. Despite lawmakers from both sides of the aisle signaling support for such bills, these bills have repeatedly passed the House only to languish in the Senate .

Red flag laws

Americans overwhelmingly support red flag laws, otherwise known as extreme risk protection orders, which work similarly to restraining orders. Again, these laws allow police and family members to petition a court — which would determine whether there’s enough evidence to do so — to temporarily keep guns from people who might be a threat to themselves or others. Some 77 percent of Americans think that a family member should be able to petition a court to do this, while 70 percent think police should, according to a survey by APM Research Lab .

And this approach to gun control has been gaining traction in recent years. A number of states adopted such laws following the Parkland, Florida, shooting , in which the gunman, like many mass shooters , displayed obvious red flags. (An acquaintance said he’d introduce himself, “ Hi, I’m Nick. I’m a school shooter. ”) Some say the red flag approach might be less controversial with gun owners, specifically, because it seems like common sense.

For red flag laws to be useful, they have to be used

“Red flag laws are promising because they’re specifically targeted at people or cases or instances in which there’s reason to believe that there might be a problem,” Lacombe said. “So it’s not like a blanket rule that treats gun owners like a particular class of citizen.”

Of course, for red flag laws to be useful, they have to be used. If police had decided to seek such an order against the shooter in the Buffalo supermarket earlier this month, who had been referred to police for threatening violence , 10 gun deaths could have been prevented. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has since announced an executive order that would compel police to do so.

Mental health restrictions

There’s also overwhelming support on both sides of the aisle ( 85 percent of Republicans and 90 percent of Democrats ) for stopping those with mental illness from buying a gun. But in the case of gun sales that happen through a licensed dealer, that’s supposed to already be happening (though the same loopholes occur for online and private sellers). If a court has had someone involuntarily committed or otherwise determined that they are incapable of managing their life, that person is not supposed to be able to buy a gun, since they should be flagged by the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) database.

In practice, that has not always happened.

After a student with a documented history of court-ordered mental health treatment shot and killed 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech in 2007, there was a major push to make sure state-level records were entered into NICS. George W. Bush signed the NICS Improvement Act into law in 2008, but it still had huge holes where relevant state and federal records were not uploaded to the database . Some of those were remedied by the Fix NICS Act that was signed into law in 2018, but the system is far from perfect.

Additionally, mass shooters generally wouldn’t be considered to have mental illness severe enough to show up in the federal gun database in the first place.

“There’s sort of this perception about mass shooters that they are severely mentally ill people,” Poliquin said. “Although they might have mental health issues, the level of mental health issues doesn’t necessarily lead to institutionalization.”

Additionally, there’s a lot of debate over mental health and mass shooting coming from Republicans that might be in bad faith. It’s not as though Americans have a higher rate of mental health problems than other countries — what makes the US exceptional is the number of guns in the country and the corresponding number of gun deaths.

“I’m not aware of any instance in which a Republican saying that this is really a mental health issue has actually then come forward with a proposal to invest additional resources in our public health and mental health infrastructure, which I think sends a signal just how serious they are,” Lacombe said.

Assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines

Bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines have an approval rating of over 60 percent in the US, according to Pew .

Assault weapons are a poorly defined class of firearms, but generally refer to military-style semi-automatic weapons. High-capacity magazines are generally ammunition clips that hold more than 10 rounds. AR-15s, the preferred style of weapon in recent mass shootings, are assault weapons, which can be modified to accept a number of after-market parts, including high-capacity magazines, that make it even deadlier.

While it has majority support, banning assault weapons is much more divided by political party. While 83 percent of Democrats approve of banning assault-style weapons, just 37 percent of Republicans do; 83 percent of Democrats would like a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines compared with 41 percent of Republicans.

Assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, both of which allow murderers to kill more people in a short span of time, used to be illegal in the US. A federal law passed in 1994 banned assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, but Congress let the legislation lapse in 2004. Even though the 1994 law had its issues — it didn’t make illegal or confiscate the 1.5 million assault weapons and 25 million large-capacity magazines that Americans already owned — the bans did significantly reduce death tolls while they were in effect .

“After that, we’ve just seen like an explosion of assault weapons all across the country,” Lloyd said, estimating the number to be in the tens of millions.

Bans on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines have an approval rating of over 60 percent in the US

Cassandra Crifasi, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said gun laws should go beyond simply listing which specific guns are restricted or not by making it harder to get deadly gun accessories.

“In response to some of these bans, you can buy a rifle that falls into the approved list, and then you can find accessories online or at gun shows that allow you to customize it and then it may become in violation of the ban,” she said. “Once you have the rifle, if you can then buy those accessories after-market, you can skirt around the ban.”

The Buffalo shooter, for example, purchased his AR-15-style gun legally but modified it to accept a large-capacity magazine that is illegal in New York.

However it’s defined, Lloyd says, limiting guns, ammo, and accessories would limit the extent of gun violence in mass shootings.

“It is impossible to ignore the fact that assault weapons are extremely dangerous because of how many people they can kill in such a short amount of time,” she said, referring to the death tolls in Buffalo and Uvalde.

There is proposed legislation, including the Keep Americans Safe Act ( HR 2510 / S 1108 ), that would ban high-capacity magazines, and the Assault Weapons Ban of 2021 , which would ban military-style assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. All of these bills have been introduced but not voted on, and thanks to the filibuster, would be unlikely to pass without a lot more Republican support.

Concealed carry

Though it varies by party, the vast majority (81 percent) of Americans oppose laws that would allow people to carry concealed handguns without a permit, according to a recent poll this month by Marquette Law School . And generally, support for the wider ability to carry guns — in schools, without permits — has been declining, according to Crifasi.

At the same time, laws allowing people to carry weapons in public have become much more commonplace in the last decade. The effort, however, began decades before in the 1980s as the NRA, beginning in Florida, sought to get states to slowly roll back their concealed carry laws from something that was a special dispensation to something that was expected as a way for gun owners to express their Second Amendment rights. Just last year, the Texas legislature passed a law making it so that people no longer need a license or training to carry a handgun .

“The NRA put forth a pretty strategic, organized, and concerted effort to change state laws, one state at a time,” Lacombe said. “As it became increasingly normalized to be in the law, voters also became more likely to see it as acceptable.”

The thinking behind these Republican and NRA talking points is that having a concealed weapon would allow the “good guys” to take down the bad guys. In practice, that doesn’t actually happen . Though there are a handful of anecdotes in which a person with a concealed weapon successfully stops a mass shooter, adding more guns to the mix is more dangerous . To wit: a man who stopped a mass shooter with his concealed weapon last year in Colorado, only to be mistakenly shot and killed by police .

As the conceal carry issue shows, gun policy reflects the influence of NRA lobbyists more than everyday Americans.

“We have an exceptionally powerful gun lobby that works on behalf of gun manufacturers to make it easy for gun dealers and gun manufacturers to sell a lot of guns really easily,” Crifasi said. “And many of our elected officials are more beholden to the gun lobby than they are to their own constituents.”

Many of the gun control ideas above are part of kitchen table discussions being had right now across the country, as Americans mourn yet another senseless tragedy at the hands of a mass shooter. Specific gun control measures have bipartisan support and could go a long way toward stopping the next mass shooting before it happens.

Unfortunately, what Americans want is not being reflected in America’s laws. The ability of the minority in small, mostly rural, and mostly white communities to outweigh the majority has vast repercussions for the way we live and the way we die. The Senate filibuster is undermining democracy, and in turn is undermining the American government’s legitimacy . It’s possible tragic events like the one last week in Texas could help turn the tide, but for now. tide-turning would require support from Republican lawmakers that actually matches the desires of their Republican constituents.

For that to change, Republicans in addition to Democrats will have to vote out politicians whose stances on guns don’t align with theirs. If not, these conversations begin and end at the kitchen table.

Clarification: Changed mentions of “assault rifles” to “assault-style weapons” to reflect the language used in Pew’s polling.

• Criminal Justice
• Gun Violence

More in this stream

What would it mean to treat guns the way we treat cars?

3 takeaways from Texas’s investigation of the Uvalde school shooting

How the Uvalde police failed

Most popular, why two astronauts are stuck in space, speaking to black journalists, trump reminded everyone how racist he can be, discrimination against trans olympians has roots in nazi germany, the movement desperately trying to get people to have more babies, would picking josh shapiro actually help harris in pennsylvania, today, explained.

Understand the world with a daily explainer plus the most compelling stories of the day.

More in Politics

The rebirth of the #Resistance

A very dangerous 24 hours in the Middle East

What the Kamala Harris identity debate shows about America

Resistance liberals were exhausted. Then Kamala Harris became the nominee.

The Starliner test mission is just one of Boeing’s many woes.

Give Trump a platform and he’ll remind people how unlikable he is.

After strikes in Beirut and Tehran, the region has never been closer to all-out war.

Identity is complicated, and she shouldn’t have to choose just one.

Vice presidential candidates don’t necessarily enjoy a home-state advantage.

Legendary activist Kimberlé Crenshaw on why those white people Zooms give her hope

Chuck Schumer’s ambitious plan to take the Supreme Court down a peg

The Trump-Vance campaign would be great if not for Trump and Vance

The US-Russia prisoner swap that freed Evan Gershkovich, explained

Why the 9/11 plea agreements are such a big deal

MDMA is on the brink of becoming medicine  Audio

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Millennials Are No More Liberal On Gun Control Than Elders, Polls Show

Hansi Lo Wang

Kyle Schmitt (from left), Owen Uber and Jordan Riger watch videos of firearm demonstrations at a meeting of Students for the Second Amendment. According to its website, the student group wants to "erase the negativity associated with firearms" at the University of Delaware. Hansi Lo Wang/NPR hide caption

Kyle Schmitt (from left), Owen Uber and Jordan Riger watch videos of firearm demonstrations at a meeting of Students for the Second Amendment. According to its website, the student group wants to "erase the negativity associated with firearms" at the University of Delaware.

High school students across the United States have been leading the call for more gun control since the school shooting in Parkland, Fla.

Some have called them the " voice of a generation on gun control " that may be able to turn the tide of a long-simmering debate.

But past polling suggests that people younger than 30 in the U.S. are no more liberal on gun control than their parents or grandparents — despite diverging from their elders on the legalization of marijuana, same-sex marriage and other social issues.

"Sometimes people surprise us, and this is one of those instances that we don't know why," says Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup.

Over the past three years, his polling organization asked the under-30 crowd whether gun laws in the U.S. should be made more strict, less strict or kept as they are now. On average, people between the ages of 18 and 29 were 1 percentage point more likely to say gun laws should be more strict than the overall national average of 57 percent.

"Young people statistically aren't that much different than anybody else," Newport says.

'What a whole generation feels'?

Polling by the Pew Research Center last year came to similar conclusions: 50 percent of millennials, between the ages of 18 and 36, said gun laws in the U.S. should be more strict. That share was almost identical among the general public, according to Kim Parker, director of social trends research at Pew.

It's All Politics

What do millennials want.

Pew did find significant differences between millennials and older generations on two gun control proposals — banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 rounds. The results showed that a greater share of millennials — both Republicans and Democrats — are more conservative when it comes to those bans compared with Generation Xers, baby boomers and members of the silent generation.

"What we're hearing now in the immediate aftermath of Parkland might not be representative of what a whole generation feels," Parker says.

Kyle Schmitt (left), 22, vice president of Students for the Second Amendment at the University of Delaware, and Owen Uber, 20, participate in a discussion on the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead. Hansi Lo Wang/NPR hide caption

Kyle Schmitt (left), 22, vice president of Students for the Second Amendment at the University of Delaware, and Owen Uber, 20, participate in a discussion on the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 people dead.

To be clear, many demographers argue that millennials make up one part of today's generation of young people. Some say that millennials include people born in the 1980s and all the way through 2000.

The teenage high school activists who have been organizing since the Florida shooting, they say, are part of a separate group some call "Generation Z." Pollsters generally don't count the views of those under 18, so there probably won't be national polling on this group until more of these young people are officially adults.

'A more progressive generation'?

Still, for 19-year-old Abigail Kaye, who considers herself a millennial, these polling results about her peers come as a shock.

"I think that's surprising because I feel like we're a more progressive generation," says Kaye, who attends the University of Delaware.

Kaye says she remembers hearing about the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., when she was growing up about a couple hours away in Scituate, R.I.

"We've grown up more, I think, with this kind of gun violence, so you'd think maybe we'd push for more regulations," she adds.

Jordan Riger, 22, uses her laptop to track attendance for a weekly meeting of Students for the Second Amendment at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del. She sees firearms as tools for self-defense. Hansi Lo Wang/NPR hide caption

Jordan Riger, 22, uses her laptop to track attendance for a weekly meeting of Students for the Second Amendment at the University of Delaware in Newark, Del. She sees firearms as tools for self-defense.

The poll findings also surprised some members of Students for the Second Amendment , a club at the University of Delaware.

The club's treasurer, Jordan Riger of Lutherville, Md., 22, says that after taking an National Rifle Association course on pistol shooting when she was 18, she has seen firearms as tools for self-defense. But she thinks many of her millennial peers don't.

"We are living in a time right now where we're seeing a lot more of these mass casualties," Riger says. "I think when people don't know that much about firearms, when they see it on the news used in horrible fashion, that's like all they associate it with."

Advocate Weighs In On How Gun Control Debate Is Being Received By Gun Rights Community

Sitting outside a student center on the University of Delaware's campus, Cahlil Evans of Smyrna, Del., 20, says while he doesn't need a gun, he can understand why people would want hunting rifles and handguns. He draws the line, though, for assault-style rifles.

"There's no need for these high-caliber rifles that pierce through walls," Evans says. "People can say they use them for hunting or whatever, but why do you need a weapon with such high caliber that it would pierce through the animal and like eight trees behind it?"

Still, 22-year-old Jeremy Grunden of Harrington, Del., says he is encouraged to hear that millennials are less likely to support banning assault-style weapons.

"I base what we need off of what the military has," says Grunden, who is president of Students for the Second Amendment at the University of Delaware. "When it comes to ... the Second Amendment, we're supposed to be a well-armed and well-maintained militia and all that. Quite frankly, we need that and plus more."

• Second Amendment
• gun control
• Millennials
• Demographics
• generation z
• parkland shooting

Most Voters Want Congress To Pass Stricter Gun Laws, Poll Finds

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Nearly 60% of registered voters think it’s at least somewhat important for lawmakers to pass stricter gun laws, a new Morning Consult/ Politico poll found after a mass shooting in Buffalo , New York—even before another shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday further ramped up calls for Congress to pass gun control legislation.

Supporters of gun control demonstrate in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on November 3, 2021 in ... [+] Washington, DC.

The poll found a combined 59% think it’s important for elected leaders to “pass stricter gun control laws,” including 83% of Democrats, 52% of Independents and 37% of Republicans.

That includes 41% who believe it’s “very important” and 18% who think it’s “somewhat important,” while 13% said it’s “not too important” and 19% believe it’s “not important at all.”

A majority also want Congress to pass legislation that places “additional restrictions on gun ownership,” with 34% saying it should be a “top priority” for lawmakers and 22% believing it’s an “important” priority, but not a top one.

A 35% plurality said the most important thing the federal government should do to prevent mass shootings is passing stricter gun control laws, but that question was more divided—25% think it’s most important to “[prevent] the spread of extremist ideologies,” and 23% want “more effective policing.”

That includes 54% of Democrats who think passing gun control laws is most effective (while 27% want to combat extremist ideologies), versus 31% of Independents and 17% of Republicans.

The House has passed two bills that would strengthen background check requirements for gun purchases, but they’re unlikely to clear the Senate, as Republican lawmakers and moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have opposed the measures.

The poll was conducted among 2,005 registered voters from May 20-22, which is after the shooting in Buffalo took place on May 14 but before the shooting in Uvalde on Tuesday.

Even as most voters said they want stricter gun control laws, 44% said they’d trust Republicans in Congress more to handle gun policy, versus 41% who said they’d trust Democrats. Only 75% of Democrats said they’d trust their own party more, while 84% of Republicans who said the same about the GOP. Independents were more evenly divided, with 34% trusting Democrats, 37% trusting Republicans and 29% having no opinion.

What We Don’t Know

Whether the shooting in Uvalde, which killed at least 19 children and two adults, will move the needle further on support for gun control measures, since the poll was conducted before that shooting. Recent polling from Gallup , Pew Research and Quinnipiac University from late 2021 found the share of Americans who want stricter gun laws has actually declined as compared with previous years. Those polls found lower levels of support than the Morning Consult/ Politico poll, suggesting the renewed focus on gun control could cause support to go up again.

What To Watch For

What Congress will do next. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday that he wouldn’t force a vote on the bills to expand background checks for gun purchases, given the likelihood it will fail in the evenly-divided Senate. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has also said he is opposed to abolishing the filibuster to pass gun control measures. Instead, Schumer said Wednesday he wants to give colleagues like Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) a chance to put together bipartisan legislation with Republicans that might have a better chance of getting through. It’s still unclear what that legislation could look like, given GOP lawmakers’ opposition to stricter gun control rules, but the Hill notes it could include more narrow background check measures or “red flag” measures that make it easier to take firearms away from people when they pose a greater danger.

Crucial Quote

“Americans can cast their vote in November for senators or members of Congress that reflect how he or she stands with guns,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday. “In the meantime, my Republican colleagues can work with us now. I know this is a slim prospect, very slim, all too slim. We’ve been burnt so many times before. But this is so important.”

Key Background

Approximately 200 mass shootings have taken place in the U.S. so far this year, and the shootings in Buffalo—which killed 10 people—and Uvalde are part of a string of shootings over the past few weeks that also includes a mass shooting at a church in Laguna Woods, California. While recent polls from fall 2021 have found slightly more than half of Americans broadly favor stricter gun rules, more specific gun proposals have typically garnered higher support with the public. Pew found in April 2021 that 87% favor preventing people with mental illness from purchasing guns, 81% support expanding background checks to include private gun sales, 64% back banning high-capacity magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition and 63% want to ban all assault-style weapons.

Further Reading

Here’s What We Know About The Victims Identified In The Texas School Shooting (Forbes)

19 Children Killed In Texas Elementary School Shooting As Biden Urges Americans To ‘Stand Up’ To Gun Industry (Forbes)

10 Shot Dead At Supermarket In Buffalo, N.Y.—FBI Probing As Hate Crime (Forbes)

Key facts about Americans and guns (Pew Research Center)

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Join The Conversation

One Community. Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts. 

Forbes Community Guidelines

Our community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations. We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space.

In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's  Terms of Service.   We've summarized some of those key rules below. Simply put, keep it civil.

Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain:

• False or intentionally out-of-context or misleading information
• Insults, profanity, incoherent, obscene or inflammatory language or threats of any kind
• Attacks on the identity of other commenters or the article's author
• Content that otherwise violates our site's  terms.

User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in:

• Continuous attempts to re-post comments that have been previously moderated/rejected
• Racist, sexist, homophobic or other discriminatory comments
• Attempts or tactics that put the site security at risk
• Actions that otherwise violate our site's  terms.

So, how can you be a power user?

• Stay on topic and share your insights
• Feel free to be clear and thoughtful to get your point across
• ‘Like’ or ‘Dislike’ to show your point of view.
• Protect your community.
• Use the report tool to alert us when someone breaks the rules.

Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's  Terms of Service.

The background and pro and con arguments were written by ProCon.org staff based upon input from the following sources.

ProCon/Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. 325 N. LaSalle Street, Suite 200 Chicago, Illinois 60654 USA

Natalie Leppard Managing Editor [email protected]

© 2023 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved

• Gun Control – Pros & Cons
• Pro & Con Quotes
• History of Gun Control
• Did You Know?
• U.S. Gun Deaths by Year
• Leading Causes of Suicide, Homicide, and Unintentional Death
• International Firearm Homicide Rates
• International Civilian Gun Ownership Rates
• Average American Gun Owner
• State Constitutional Right to Bear Arms
• School Shootings: Jan. 1, 2013 through June 30, 2015

Cite This Page

• Artificial Intelligence
• Private Prisons
• Space Colonization
• Social Media
• Death Penalty
• School Uniforms
• Video Games
• Animal Testing
• Gun Control
• Banned Books
• Teachers’ Corner

ProCon.org is the institutional or organization author for all ProCon.org pages. Proper citation depends on your preferred or required style manual. Below are the proper citations for this page according to four style manuals (in alphabetical order): the Modern Language Association Style Manual (MLA), the Chicago Manual of Style (Chicago), the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA), and Kate Turabian's A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations (Turabian). Here are the proper bibliographic citations for this page according to four style manuals (in alphabetical order):

[Editor's Note: The APA citation style requires double spacing within entries.]

[Editor’s Note: The MLA citation style requires double spacing within entries.]

Inside the Myopic Sight of Gun Control

I've seen a ton of people talk about gun control through the years. Most of us have, so I'm not remotely unique in that, but something I've noticed that I'm not sure if any of you all have is how myopic gun control advocates are on the issue with regard to opposition to their preferred policies.

It seems that every time the subject of violence, crime, or anything that might remotely involve a firearm in some manner, they default to, "If this is a problem, why aren't you supporting gun control?"

They can't fathom a world in which people don't actually agree that gun control even works, which we know it doesn't .

But it goes further than that .

At the science-news website, phys.org, Joe Arney of the University of Colorado at Boulder interviewed his colleague, Chris Vargo, about some new research into the politics of gun-control that Vargo believes explains why “the U.S. public as a whole doesn’t consider guns an important issue.” Per Vargo, the key problem is that Americans do not think about guns for long enough to demand stricter regulation. In the wake of a mass-murder incident, he contended, the public’s attention is held, but then swiftly recedes. Thus, he concluded, “public sentiment” never becomes “strong enough to pressure legislators into taking action.” It would be difficult to find a more perfect example of the core flaw within the gun-control movement’s approach to politics than is provided here. Throughout the interview, both Arney and Vargo simply assume that the answer to the problem must be more gun control. They assume that the only important question is why America’s legislatures have not yet passed restrictions on our freedom. In their estimation, the destination is set; what matters is how the media can build sufficient enthusiasm, anger or heartbreak to get the voters there. That the country might be filled with people who disagree with their monomania seems never to have occurred to them. To them, gun control is the obvious solution, and, if it hasn’t happened yet in the ways they favor, then it must be because Americans are a frivolous people who consider the criminal use of firearms to be “unimportant,” who resist calls for regulation out of childish spite and who prefer to ignore the issue than consider it seriously—none of which is true.

Author Charles C.W. Cooke notes that in the interview, Arney notes that after mass shootings, searches for things like "Second Amendment rights," "concealed carry permits," and "Sandy Hook donations" spike, but only one of those can remotely be considered gun control. The other two are, as Cooke notes, the exact opposite of it.

The truth is that those are rejected outright by the average anti-gunner on an almost subconscious level. They can't fathom the possibility that someone disagrees with them, particularly out of a sense of principle.

Gun control is one of those issues that many people attach to as a positional good. What I mean is that it's a position they figure all good people hold. After all, who can be opposed to saving lives, which is exactly how they view gun control. Since they figure that most people are good, they figure that most people want gun control. If they don't want it, it's because they haven't been sufficiently outraged enough to put guns at the top of their political wish list.

The problem with this thinking--which Cooke argues isn't really "thinking" per se, and he's not wrong--is that it leaves absolutely no room for understanding the other side of things. 

It also means that they tune out literally every bit of evidence showing that gun control doesn't work. Their positional good hinges on it working and so they can't process any information to the contrary.

Which is why, at the end of the day, they automatically assume we all believe gun control works. They can't comprehend that anyone but an absolute monster could think otherwise.

Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger and lifetime shooter. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. He also puts out a daily newsletter of non-Second Amendment stories at https://tomknighton.substack.com/

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

• NPR Affiliate Attacks Preemption By Blaming Republicans for Problems in Democrat-Run Cities
• Colorado Media Swallows Arguments on New Gun Laws Going Into Effect This Month
• New York County Tries to Tap Out of Lawsuit Challenging Its Carry Policies
• New Bill Would Block States From Taxing 2A Rights
• New Mexico Governor's Anti-Gun Edict Fails to Stop Spike in Juvenile Crime

TRENDING ON TOWNHALL MEDIA

Gun Control vs. Gun Safety as Suicide Prevention

Suicide prevention lessons learned from the golden gate bridge..

Updated July 8, 2024 | Reviewed by Devon Frye

• Suicide Risk Factors and Signs
• Take our Depression Test
• Find a therapist near me
• Suicide by gun is extremely lethal and on the rise.
• Efforts to reduce access to guns are costly and at odds with the strong gun culture in the U.S.
• Gun safety measures could be a more realistic way to prevent suicide.
• The recent installment of the Golden Gate Bridge safety net is a useful model.

Written by Alban Foulser, Ph.D., Danielle Currin, Ph.D., and Sallie Mack, Ph.D.

Suicide by gun is on the rise in the United States; rates of suicide by gun set national records in both 2021 and 2022 (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, 2023; Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 2023). While guns are used in fewer than 10 percent of suicide attempts (Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, 2023), guns are an extremely lethal method, with 90 percent of suicide attempts by gun resulting in death (Cai et al., 2022).

As clinical psychologists in training, we have found ourselves asking the question: What can we do? One historical example offers an initial path forward.

The Power of Removing Lethal Means

In the mid-1960s, suicide rates in the United Kingdom decreased drastically, from 244 per million in 1963 to 151 per million in 1975 (McClure, 2000). Research by Kreitan (1976) revealed that this change was due to a change in the type of gas used to power household stoves.

Until the 1950s, coal and oil gas in household stoves contained high levels of carbon monoxide. In the 1950s and 1960s, coal gas was replaced by natural gas, which contains almost no carbon monoxide, making the stoves much less lethal. The result was a huge decrease in suicide rates.

This famous example demonstrates that removing access to lethal means can significantly reduce suicide rates. So, why can’t we do the same with guns?

Two primary areas of concern arise when considering the introduction of gun control policies in the United States: financial cost and public opinion. In 1974, Baltimore, Maryland enacted the nation’s first official gun buyback program, in which individuals could surrender their firearms in exchange for $50. While over 10,000 guns were collected and destroyed through the program, gun violence in the city was not significantly impacted, and no research on its efficacy as a suicide deterrent has been done (Merrefield, 2022).

In the decades since, other buyback programs have been implemented, including a federal program from 1999-2001 in which over 20,000 guns were surrendered, but these have largely fizzled out or been utilized by individuals owning guns other than those most commonly used in gun violence (e.g., small-caliber handguns). And when considered in the context of how many guns U.S. civilians are estimated to own (roughly 390 million in 2018, or 120.5 guns per 100 residents), these buyback numbers become alarmingly small, with the financial cost quickly surpassing hundreds of millions of dollars.

Even if such a program were financially viable, a much larger issue quickly becomes apparent. The U.S. is a nation in which many individuals strongly identify with gun culture. This can be seen on both a macro- and micro-level scale.

In the 1990s, after a CDC-funded study linked the increased risk of gun violence with having a gun in the home, the National Rifle Association argued that the CDC was advocating for gun control, leading to the passing of what is commonly known as the Dickey Amendment in 1996. It stipulates that “[none] of the funds made available [in the spending bill] may be used to advocate or promote gun control” (Rostron, 2018).

For over 20 years, this amendment remained relatively untouched, aside from an addition in 2011 that extended it to cover the National Institutes of Health as well. Though a report accompanying the amendment in 2018 clarified that research on the causes of gun violence is not banned, the message was clear: Research that could be perceived as infringing upon Americans’ rights to own guns does not fit with the values the government espouses.

This culture of protecting gun rights can be seen not just in policymakers but also in the general American public. A 2016 study revealed that across the U.S., rates of gun ownership varied widely by state, from 5.2 percent in Delaware to 61.7 percent in Alaska, and that individuals with exposure to social gun culture were significantly more likely to own a gun themselves (Kalesan et al., 2016). Additionally, research has shown disparities in gun policy support when considering both gun ownership and sociodemographic factors (Oraka et al., 2019).

The U.S. is, and has always been, a nation of individuals with diverse identities and ideologies. As we have seen across U.S. history, this diversity can make it difficult to enact and enforce policies on which large swaths of people hold different and sometimes incompatible views.

What If We Focused on Making Guns Safer?

Rather than focusing on removing widespread access to guns, Americans may find more common ground by increasing gun safety. This harm reduction model has been used to reduce the lethality of other means, with a famous recent example being the Golden Gate Bridge.

In January 2024, construction of a suicide safety net was completed on the Golden Gate Bridge, where approximately 30 people die by suicide per year (Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District, 2024). This safety net was installed in response to research by Seigan (1978) that 94 percent of survivors of suicide attempts at the Golden Gate Bridge did not go on to attempt suicide again in a 26-year follow-up.

The recent completion of the Golden Gate Bridge safety net and the recent increases in suicide by gun make this an opportune time to brainstorm methods of preventing suicide by gun. Despite the many challenges in approaching gun safety and suicide prevention, psychologists may provide unique and effective novel approaches given our training in promoting safety and well-being, respecting rights and dignity, and centering cultural responsiveness and humility.

We can learn from the Golden Gate safety net as we develop culturally competent methods that similarly balance our clients’ values with their safety. We will expand on how to use a cultural competency framework with gun safety in a follow-up article.

Cai, Z., Junus, A., Chang, Q., & Yip, P.S.F. (2022). The lethality of suicide methods: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 300: 121-129.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. (2023, November 29). Suicide Data and Statistics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/suicide/suicide-data-statistics.html

Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. (2024). Suicide Deterrent Net. https://www.goldengate.org/district/district-projects/suicide-deterrent… golden

Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions. (2023). U.S. gun violence in 2021: An accounting of a public health crisis. https://publichealth.jhu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/2023-june-cgvs…

Kalesan, B., Villarreal, M. D., Keyes, K. M., & Galea, S. (2016). Gun ownership and social gun culture. Injury Prevention, 22(3), 216-220.

Kreitman, N. (1976). The coal gas story. United Kingdom suicide rates, 1960-71. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 30(2), 86-93.

Merrefield, C. (2022, October 21). Gun buybacks: what the research says. The Journalist’s Resource. Retrieved from https://journalistsresource.org/health/gun-buybacks-what-the-research-s… .

McClure, G. M. G. (2000). Changes in suicide in England and Wales, 1960–1997. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 176(1), 64-67.

Oraka, E., Thummalapally, S., Anderson, L., Burgess, T., Seibert, F., & Strasser, S. (2019). A cross-sectional examination of US gun ownership and support for gun control measures: sociodemographic, geographic, and political associations explored. Preventive Medicine, 123, 179-184.

Rostron, A. (2018). The Dickey Amendment on federal funding for research on gun violence: a legal dissection. American Journal of Public Health, 108(7), 865-867.

Atlanta Behavioral Health Advocates (ABHA) is an interprofessional and collaborative group of behavioral health professionals in Atlanta, Georgia engaged in social justice advocacy.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Online Therapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Self Tests NEW
• Therapy Center
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Sticking up for yourself is no easy task. But there are concrete skills you can use to hone your assertiveness and advocate for yourself.

• Emotional Intelligence
• Gaslighting
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

• Publications
• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

Public Attitudes Toward Gun Control

Pew research center data note.

The Pew Research Center has been tracking attitudes about gun control for nearly 20 years. Our question asks whether it is more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns, or to control gun ownership.

Our most recent survey on the issue, conducted July 26-29, 2012, shortly after a gunman killed 12 people at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, found that 47% said it was more important to control gun ownership, while 46% said it was more important to protect the rights of Americans to own guns. Opinions were largely unchanged from April 2012, when 45% prioritized gun control and 49% gun rights.

Opinion about gun control has been divided since early 2009, shortly after Barack Obama’s election. From 1993 through 2008, majorities had said it was more important to control gun ownership than to protect gun rights.

In May 1999, a month after the shooting at Columbine High School, 65% said it was more important to control gun ownership while 30% said it was more important to protect gun rights. The previous measure, from six years earlier (December 1993) found that 57% prioritized gun control while 34% prioritized gun rights.

Recent mass shootings have had little impact on the public’s attitudes toward gun control. That was the case after the Colorado theater shootings ; similarly, views of gun control changed little after the Jan. 2011 shooting in Tucson Arizona , which killed six people and seriously wounded former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

In April 2007, following the large-scale shooting at Virginia Tech University , 60% said it was more important to control gun ownership, which was little changed from 58% in February 2004.

The partisan gap in attitudes about gun control has widened considerably in recent years. In July, following the shootings in Colorado, 71% of Republicans said it was more important to protect the right of Americans to own guns while just 26% said it was more important to control gun ownership. Among Democrats, opinion was roughly the reverse: 72% said it was more important to control gun ownership while 21% prioritized gun rights. Independents were divided:50% said it was more important to protect gun rights; 43% said gun control was more important.

In 1993, fewer than half of Republicans (45%) prioritized gun rights over gun control. Democrats’ views over the past two decades, by contrast, have changed very little. In 1993, just 25% said protecting gun rights was more important than gun control. (For more on changing views about gun control among partisan and demographic groups, see “More Support for Gun Rights, Gay Marriage than in 2008, 2004,” April 25, 2012.)

Sign up for our weekly newsletter

Fresh data delivery Saturday mornings

Sign up for The Briefing

Weekly updates on the world of news & information

• Religion & Social Values

Support for legal abortion is widespread in many places, especially in Europe

Public opinion on abortion, 8 in 10 americans say religion is losing influence in public life, how people around the world view same-sex marriage, the pope is concerned about climate change. how do u.s. catholics feel about it, most popular.

901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

© 2024 Pew Research Center

• Alzheimer's disease & dementia
• Arthritis & Rheumatism
• Attention deficit disorders
• Autism spectrum disorders
• Biomedical technology
• Diseases, Conditions, Syndromes
• Endocrinology & Metabolism
• Gastroenterology
• Gerontology & Geriatrics
• Health informatics
• Inflammatory disorders
• Medical economics
• Medical research
• Medications
• Neuroscience
• Obstetrics & gynaecology
• Oncology & Cancer
• Ophthalmology
• Overweight & Obesity
• Parkinson's & Movement disorders
• Psychology & Psychiatry
• Radiology & Imaging
• Sleep disorders
• Sports medicine & Kinesiology
• Vaccination
• Breast cancer
• Cardiovascular disease
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• Colon cancer
• Coronary artery disease
• Heart attack
• Heart disease
• High blood pressure
• Kidney disease
• Lung cancer
• Multiple sclerosis
• Myocardial infarction
• Ovarian cancer
• Post traumatic stress disorder
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Schizophrenia
• Skin cancer
• Type 2 diabetes
• Full List »

share this!

August 1, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

peer-reviewed publication

trusted source

Analysis suggests gun permits may be more effective than background checks alone at reducing firearm homicides

by Tufts University

Despite widespread support, laws enforcing universal background checks at the time of firearm purchase may not be enough to move the needle on reducing shooting deaths in the United States.

A Tufts University School of Medicine study, published August 1 in the journal JAMA Network Open , reports that states that require gun permits rather than relying solely on universal background checks see firearm homicide rates, on average, 18% lower than states with background check policies alone.

The analysis compared firearm homicide data from the 12 states with universal background check laws but no permit requirements (e.g., New York, Nevada, Vermont) and the seven states with gun permit laws (e.g., Massachusetts, California, Rhode Island) from 1976 to 2022.

States in the former group showed slight variations in firearm homicide rates while those with permit laws saw reductions in shooting deaths ranging from 2% to 32%.

"These findings cast doubt on the main strategy currently being used by gun violence prevention advocates and policymakers to reduce firearm fatalities," says study author Michael Siegel, a professor of public health and community medicine at the School of Medicine.

"If state lawmakers really want to reduce gun violence, the most effective policy they can enact is one that requires permits in order to purchase or possess a gun."

While research on universal background check laws shows that they are associated with decreases in firearm homicides, most of this work has not differentiated between policies requiring permits and those that do not. By separating them, two studies from 2018 and 2020 found early evidence that the success of universal background checks can be attributed to the permit laws.

These findings are further supported by Siegel's investigation, which compared firearm death rates recorded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the State Firearm Law Database, a database he oversees at Tufts that aggregates and updates all state firearm legislation.

Siegel is not surprised that gun permits are associated with lower firearm fatalities. While requirements vary by state, permit laws typically require someone who wants to own a gun to go through a series of checks before granting authorization, valid for several years, to purchase firearms from various dealers.

The advantage of state permits is that their criminal databases are more consistently kept up to date and are more likely to record lower-level crimes, such as domestic battery or a DUI, compared to the federal databases used for universal background checks, which rely on states to track this data.

Universal background checks can fail when a request for a background check takes so long to come back that it has passed the window of time—72 hours—that a person can legally be kept waiting for a gun.

This loophole allows individuals with criminal records to make a firearm purchase by default. Background checks are also less effective when someone has recently committed a crime that disqualifies them from owning a gun, while permits can be immediately suspended.

"Some gun owners might hear this and say that permits are much more intrusive, but I want to emphasize it's actually a win-win, both for gun owners and public health," says Siegel.

He argues that gun owners on average have four or more firearms, so having a permit system makes it easier for them to make multiple purchases over time because their permit wouldn't require them to get a background check for each exchange.

Siegel plans to continue exploring the emerging association between gun permit laws and firearm homicide rates, while also examining their impact on firearm suicides.

"One of the major implications of this research is that it supports changing the way we do things, such as encouraging all states to adopt reciprocal permitting systems, meaning a person with a gun permit in one state would be allowed to bring their license and gun legally into another state," says Siegel.

Explore further

Feedback to editors

Study uncovers connections between obesity and heart failure

7 hours ago

Global climate change could create more opportunities for rise and spread of new cholera strains, analysis suggests

With new technique, patient-derived neurons accurately model late-onset Alzheimer's disease

Targeted therapy extends survival in cancers of unknown primary

9 hours ago

Study explores how antifragility in complex dynamical systems could revolutionize cancer treatment

10 hours ago

Study finds regular aspirin use associated with greatest reduction in colorectal cancer among those most at risk

Clinical trial finds benefit in taking fish oil for those genetically predisposed to Alzheimer's

New prediction model could help inform patients of their risks of having shoulder replacement surgery

11 hours ago

Researchers determine how the hippocampus generates and sustains oscillations

12 hours ago

New insights into cellular processes after a stroke

Related stories.

'Set' of gun laws needed to reduce gun violence

Aug 7, 2019

Permitless open carry laws may lead to more firearm-related suicides

Mar 11, 2024

Study shows that permit to purchase laws are a promising avenue to reduce suicides in young adults

Jul 8, 2024

State gun laws have mixed impact on suicide and homicide rates, study finds

Jul 11, 2024

Team finds universal background checks lower homicide rates

Mar 28, 2019

This gun policy platform could help reduce gun violence by 28%, researchers say

Nov 16, 2022

Recommended for you

Study examines suicide contagion following celebrity deaths, opening avenues for prevention

Jul 31, 2024

Fatal opioid overdoses reduce US life expectancy by nearly a year

Link found between obesity during pregnancy and increased risk of sudden unexpected infant death

43% of cocoa products exceed lead safety levels, study finds

Public health measures that reduce dementia risk could save up to $5bn, UK study suggests

Cracking the carb code: Researchers create new glycemic index database to improve dietary awareness

Let us know if there is a problem with our content.

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Medical Xpress in any form.

Newsletter sign up

Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy

Donate and enjoy an ad-free experience

We keep our content available to everyone. Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.

E-mail newsletter