GunsMajority of Americans -- gun owners and non-gun-owners -- support stronger gun laws
Gun violence claims 31,000 U.S. lives each year in the United States, and the rate of firearms homicides in America is twenty times higher than it is in other economically advanced nations. A new national public opinion survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the majority of Americans support a broad array of policies to reduce gun violence. For many policies, there was little difference in support between gun owners and non-gun-owners.
Study maintains broad support for weapons controls // Source: jhsph.edu
The majority of Americans support a broad array of policies to reduce gun violence, according to a new national public opinion survey conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. These policies include: requiring universal background checks for all gun sales (supported by 89 percent); banning the sale of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons (69 percent); banning the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines (68 percent); and prohibiting high-risk individuals from having guns, including those convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile (83 percent) and those convicted of violating a domestic-violence restraining order (81 percent). Americans also support a range of measures to strengthen oversight of gun dealers and various policies restricting gun access by persons with mental illness.
A release from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health reports that the national survey, which over-sampled gun owners and non-gun owners living in homes with guns to allow for more precise estimates of opinions among these groups, was fielded in January 2013, several weeks following the mass school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The majority of Americans support all but 4 of the 31 gun policies asked about in the survey. For many policies, there was little difference in support between gun owners and non-gun-owners.
“This research indicates high support among Americans, including gun owners in many cases, for a wide range of policies aimed at reducing gun violence,” said lead study author Colleen Barry, Ph.D., MPP, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “These data indicate broad consensus among the American public in support of a comprehensive approach to reducing the staggering toll of gun violence in the United States.”
At the same time, the researchers fielded a second national survey to assess Americans’ attitudes about mental illness. This survey reveals ambivalent attitudes among the American public about mental illness. Sixty-one percent of respondents favor greater spending on mental health screening and treatment as a strategy for reducing gun violence, and 58 percent said discrimination against people with mental illness is a serious problem. Yet, almost half of respondents thought people with serious mental illness are more dangerous than others, and two-thirds expressed unwillingness to have a person with a serious mental illness as a neighbor.
“In light of our findings about Americans’ attitudes toward persons with mental illness, it is worth thinking carefully about how to implement effective gun-violence-prevention measures without exacerbating
