WASHINGTON – Banning handgun ownership remains at a record-high of 74% in the United States, a Gallup poll indicated recently.
However, almost half of Americans believe the laws covering the sale of firearms should be strengthened and half say they should stay the same or be less strict, Gallup reported.
Public support for stricter gun laws is down from 58% in the days after the December 2012 Newtown, Connecticut shootings, and is lower than it was from 2000 through 2006, when, for the most part, solid majorities of Americans favored such laws. However, it remains slightly higher than from 2009 to 2011, when support for stricter laws fell to record lows of 44% and 43%.
The poll results are based on an Oct. questionnaire.
Recent attitudes on banning handguns are markedly different from the 1980s, when barely half of Americans opposed a ban on civilian handgun ownership. It is also a major turnaround from a half century ago, when only 36% opposed such a ban. Opposition to banning citizens’ possession of handguns mounted in the 1990s and 2000s, and first crossed the 70% threshold in 2009.
Popular demand for tightening legal controls on gun sales varies most by political orientation, with Democrats broadly in favor of stricter gun laws and more than a third in favor of banning handguns. Less than a quarter of Republicans support either measure.
“It is hardly too strong to say that the Consitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intention…There are men, in all ages who mean to govern well: but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters: But they mean to be masters.
All the government has to do is quit cherry picking which laws it wants to enforce and then enforce the laws that are already there. Now that being said, we really need to do something about the mentally ill people out there. There seems to be a whole lot of them around and more coming every day. I really believe it is the children of the older duggers that are showing the effects of their parents drug problems. I know this is true. I see many, many examples of it in people I know who were druggers and had kids while they were using. We even have it in some of the family.
@Ghost-what’s the matter? Did I touch a nerve there? Are you trying to tell me the mass murder’s were not mentally ill and needed help?? All the family’s of those dead people will disagree with you.
@Ghost-I never said that at all. There are many kinds of mental illness.
There’s no division here, we don’t need more gun laws, just enforce the ones we have. Where’s all the big brother haters on issues like this…
I agree with you, (my) thought is, (I’m) not divided. I’m pro, responsible, gun ownership. I don’t need our government taking gun ownership, (possession) away from responsible gun owners. We don’t need more gun laws, enforce the ones we have. Once we give up all our guns, or the government takes them, we will become, subjects.