Gallup: 6 in 10 Americans Want Stricter Gun Control Laws
Courtesy Gallup

“Sixty-one percent of Americans favor stricter laws on the sale of firearms, down modestly from March, when 67% said this shortly after the Parkland, Florida, school shooting on Feb. 14. The current reading is similar to the 60% measured last fall after the Las Vegas mass shooting. Along with March, it reflects the highest percentage to favor tougher firearms laws in two or more decades.

“These data come from Gallup’s latest survey, conducted Oct. 1-10, as the 2018 midterm elections draw near and gun control proponents have gone on the offensive to make tighter laws a major issue for voters.

“Support for stricter gun control was at its highest when Gallup first asked Americans about their views on tightening firearms restrictions in 1990. At that time, 78% in the U.S. favored stricter gun control. Sentiment favoring tougher gun laws remained at or near 70% through the end of 1993; in 1994, the U.S. government passed the Brady bill and an assault weapons ban. After the passage of these regulations, support for tougher gun control waned, decreasing to 62% in 1995 and bottoming out at 43% in 2011.” – Gallup’s RJ Reinhart in 6 in 10 Americans Support Stronger Gun Laws

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107 COMMENTS

    • You hit the nail on the head. Polling never gives nuance. The questions are usually simple in wording and tend to leave the impression that if you say no, you’re somehow mentally deficient.

      • It’s the equivalent of someone calling you up on the phone and asking, “Are you in favor of greater regulation concerning logging in the Pacific Northwest?” The kneejerk reaction is to say “yes” because destroying forests is bad. However, without knowing the current regulations, one would have no idea whether there needs to be more or less.

    • And there it is.
      It is never clarified what specific laws 6 in 10 are supportive of. The ones we already have? New ones that are proposed but aren’t laws yet? No context at all.
      🤠

    • The Australian Greens always want tighter, tougher, and more punitive gun laws but when pressed couldn’t actually state what the current laws entail. They actually mentioned conditions that were not legal since the post Port Arthur National Firearms Laws.

    • I have been also wondering how many of those 61% know the current infringements on the RKBA. Well, we shouldn’t be too hard in them, they have been told by high officials that getting a gun is easier than getting a book or fresh vegetables.

  3. Frankly, I’ve lived in America all my life, and 6 out of 10 Americans are morons.

  4. And that’s why the 2nd Amendment is a enumerated, natural right, not to be infringed. The flawed geniuses that adopted the constitution specifically wanted to avoid mob rule. They also were prescient with their forecast of the future, as the modern democrat party are THE domestic enemies our Founders warned us about.

    • Also why the founders formed America as a Constitutional Republic not a democracy,also the electoral college method of presidential determination all things the Marxist Left want to change.

    • Furthermore, the ancillary writings of these same founders insisted that these protections were indeed for “military grade” “weapons of war”. That idea is implicit in the wording of the second amendment, stated plainly that the people must protect their own liberty.

  5. I like how the topic is always background checks. I’d bet about 95% of all legal purchases undergo them. Why can’t they ask if instead of stupid laws which won’t change murderers minds, how about a minimum mandatory life imprisonment or death for murders. A murderer can never redeem him/herself. They can never make that right.

    • When you look at cities with draconian gun laws (cough Chicago) it’s clear that most arrests for guns get dropped or plea bargained away. Why?
      Prosecutors like to have a winning record.
      Plea bargains save court time. If every gun arrest went to trial, the court system would be overwhelmed.
      Prisons are expensive. Closing them saves money. However, the result is overcrowding which leads to court orders and early release.
      The prison population has “too many” minorities. This leads to racial disparity claims, lawsuits etc.

      • One small correction there. Prisons aren’t expensive, most of them are run by private, for-profit, companies.

        • They’re expensive if they’re empty. It’s like public transportation, everyone needs to be forced to use it for it to make money.

        • CZJay, what about being forced to use toll roads because the company that owns the road has revenue targets. The alternative roads are deliberately congested by slowing and shortening the traffic light timing.

          In this situation, very common in Sydney, I’d prefer to use the public transport which halves the commute by time and only a tenth of the cost of driving and parking.

    • I have guns. If I undergo a background check every day for a year, will that prevent my guns from killing someone? I don’t think so. So what is the big whoop about UBC, if it will not save a single life(which it won’t)? The big whoop is, as always and in everything, UBC *requires* a firearms registry. And that registry is the goal, nobody gives a good poop about the background checks. UBC’s abject failure will make it obvious that we must utilize the registry to confiscate all firearms. After that, we can free the unicorns and close the prisons, everybody can spend their time admiring the rainbows.

    • Not only that, but they said that Trump would get 16% of the vote in 2016. No more. Close, weren’t they? THAT is the level of retardation that one must deal with in the mass media, the pollsters, the antis, and (virtually)all politicians.

      • 60% versus 40% does add up.

        Isn’t that close to how much Trump lost the popular vote? Luckily we don’t have direct democracy. California would rule everyone if we went by popular vote.

        If it goes up 10% we might see federal laws. Got to educate the youth to stop that from happening. No more Fudd guns leading the way, have to modernize to draw the attention of the youth market.

        • Pew showed about 90% of greens would vote Democrats in a run off and more than 90% of libertarians would vote GOP in a run off. The majority of the popular vote went to GOP+Libertarians, the Dem+Greens got less votes.

      • “Relying largely on opinion polls, election forecasters put Clinton’s chance of winning at anywhere from 70% to as high as 99%” -http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/why-2016-election-polls-missed-their-mark/
        Note: nowhere is 60/40 ever mentioned. The polls all had Trump losing by anywhere from 40 to 98 points. My question is: what level of poll’s accuracy does that equal? Is it “unable to hit the broad side of a barn?”, or more like ; “unable to hit the broad side of a barn…from the inside?” Would you go hunting with someone with an accuracy record like that? If you would, better stay in front of his muzzle at all times. That’s the one spot that’s probably safe.
        I remember a time long ago, in North Dakota. I was there for a family reunion and someone pulled out a M29 and wanted to know if anybody wanted to shoot it. I had never fired a .44mag before(this was in 1976) so I was right in line. We went out to a field behind the house and set up some cans on fence posts(this is how shooting typically works on the prairies where you have visibility measured in miles, not feet) The cousin before me took aim at a can up on a post about 50 feet away, and proceeded to hit the ground about ten feet in front of his toes. I couldn’t believe it was possible to shoot that badly. I did better with my first shot out of a Remington 121 when I was a six year old.
        I learned something that day; never underestimate the ignorance of a human being. Whenever I’ve thought that we were at the bottom of the barrel, with nowhere left to go but up, they figure out how to dig through the bottom of the barrel, and go even lower.

    • In school I had to do some polling… We were lazy, thus didn’t complete the work. So, we just made shit up to not get in trouble. I wasn’t aware adults kept on doing that once they become professionals, but I understand it.

  7. A 7% drop from March 2018 to 60% in October 2018 is encouraging, but how encouraging depends on quite a few factors not mentioned. Given that in the 2016 election polling entities proved to many of us that they were biased, incompetently designed and uselessly inaccurate, or possibly out-and-out faked, my reaction to Gallup’s “Information” on this is less than lukewarm. We have Fake News, possibly Fake Polls and it looks like soon we will have Fake News Clips and Sound Bites to deal with.

    https://www.cfr.org/report/deep-fake-disinformation-steroids

    • Undoubtedly the 2016 were intentionally skewed in an effort to suppress the vote. If you’ll recall, in the last few days before the election places like The NY Times had a ticker on their masthead where Hillary had a 97% chance of winning. It was obviously, bullshit. But if you’re in a swing state, the kid has the flu, you have errands to run, and you “know” Hillary is going to win anyway, you’re inclined not to take the time to vote. I hope this forever disabuses folks from relying on these manipulative polls. They’re trying it again with their “blue wave” nonsense. We may lose the house. But everyone has to take the time and VOTE.

      • I think they shot themselves in the foot with the 97% figure. How many people that would have voted for her didn’t bother because “my vote isn’t needed”? Meanwhile if anyone actually took the time to look at the big picture you could see who had the enthusiasm. Trump’s rallies were packed. Hildabeast couldn’t fill a high school gymnasium. Our side showed up because for once we had a candidate that wasn’t a rehash of the same old tired BS. I thought we were in trouble until the leftist showed their ass these past couple of months. Now the anti leftist base is energised again and hopefully we can burry what’s left of the leftist agenda once and for all.

        • Yeah- I believed it backfired on them. There’s an obscure video on YouTube I watched of a person who attended election results for Hillary at the Javits center. It’s about 20 minutes long. The person doesn’t say a word throughout the video. They just film the entire night (it’s edited) that shows how the day began with such excitement and how at the end, the place was emptying out and was like a morgue. LMAO. I sometimes watch those lection night videos when I get the sadz 😂😂😂

        • Is that why the cameras always showed Hillary in close up? To hide the size of the crowd? Just like how the media now covers the “Moms Demand Action” protests?

        • That is how easy it is to manipulate the sheeple. Just pack the flock all together and then use tight camera shots to make them look like thousands. Just make sure that you never show the 90% empty space at the back. When you can’t even get a hundred to show up, just pay a few and bus them in for the occasion.
          http://protestjobs.com/
          https://crowdsondemand.com/
          etc., etc., etc….

      • The thing about overreporting is it hurts both sides. If you’re a Hillary supporter and your kid has the flu, you don’t feel the need to go vote cause she’s got the win without you. It didn’t just suppress Trump supporters.

    • These polling firms and especially the media covering them tend to take the peaks and report them.

      What they wont say is that over 50, 40, 30, 20, 15 10 year trends that support for substantive gun control is down on all those relevant long term trends.

      Not mentioned either is that polls on subjects where people feel there is some kind of social stigma attached to a position the results don’t reflect how people feel or vote. Especially if the question might signal something else, like in this case gun ownership.

      We are seeing hacking everywhere. I do not want gallup or any polling firm to know I support the Second amendment meaning I likely have a firearm; and record that along with my phone number as gallup has been established to record and maintain answers along with phone numbers, this day of ubiquitous eventually hacking of all large databases. Seems like an invitation to burglary.

    • Underestimate to your peril.

      I wouldn’t pretend like we are winning. I wouldn’t behave as if we have a successful strategy.

    • I do not think any poll is a worthwhile measure of whether POTG are “winning” the fight about gun control. In today’s world, but particularly in the United States, the news and information resources are so extensively controlled by the Left that even news or information that seems positive is suspect. Put aside what you think news and information sources should be and consider what they are. They ARE propaganda channels for those who intend to impose a Globalist agenda on the vast majority of Humanity. Disarming the civilian populace is an imperative for that agenda. For me, the only valid measure that “We” are winning is the repeal of all Federal, State and Local “gun control” laws in the U.S.. YMMV.

  8. This matters not, our constitution and the 2nd amendment to it is not baised on popularity or polls

  9. Assuming those numbers aren’t completely bogus, the hard fact is that g un control is not a major issue for the vast majority of those 60% when it comes to voting. For the majority of the 40% it’s a central issue.

  10. The probably oversampled a bunch of mommies, fudds and other anti’s, because Gallup has proven to be such a non-biased polling institute. /sarc

    Imho 9/10 polls try to shape public opinion towards the progressive/communist/globalist narrative then they try to reflect public opinion.

    • My father’s company hired Gallup to run internal polls for the company. Gallup’s public opinion polls are a sort of job application. They may use biased reporting, especially for things like opinion on policy. But their election polls at least need to be pretty close to accurate and their public opinion polls can’t be too far outside the mainstream or Gallup will lose credibility and won’t get hired as much.

  11. Correction, 6 out of 10 unemployed couch potatoes who don’t have the brains or ambition to wipe their own rear ends and who think you can buy guns out of vending machines want stricter laws…

  12. Polling organizations should be required to disclose the EXACT questions asked during their polls.
    A good example of dishonest polling is as follows:
    The polling question: Are you in favor of measures that would reduce gun violence?
    Most people would answer “yes” to such a question.
    When the polling organization publishes its “findings”, it declares that most people are in favor of stricter “gun control”.
    Dishonesty, on a grand scale, to say the least…

    • ^^^THIS^^^…should be moved to the top of the comment section. These polling companies are asking questions in a way designed to fulfill their desired outcome. Also, most folks who aren’t gun owners don’t know that background checks in the form of NICS is already mandated on the federal level and that people can’t just order guns over the internet and have them delivered to their front door. So of course they’d answer yes, the y want “stricter gun control” because they don’t know existing laws.

    • It’s called “push polling”, I believe. I long ago stopped caring about poll results when the question is not included.

      • There was an episode of either “Yes Minister” or “Yes, Prime Minister” where a poll had widely different results because of subtle changes in the questions

  13. Anyone EVER answer a poll in support of peop…er gun control?!? Yeah me neither😦I hung up on the NRA gal clumsily quizzing me…

    • I hang up, or walk away from, ever single poll taker, including the census takers. I send back their form, telling them how many people live in my house. THAT is what the census is, and it IS mentioned in the Constitution.
      So then when they show up asking me how many TV sets I have and what media I read I tell them to go mind their own business, and I’ll mind mine. And you know what they do then? They sit out in their car and fill in the federal form anyway. Just by guess and in faint hopes I imagine. Ask me how I know this…

      • Pink cows, naturally. You’ll need to work on the whole unicorn farts and flying grumpaloos thing if you ever plan to get the witch elected to anything. Which I guess is almost nothing now that she has no more security status to sell to the highest bidder.

    • Brown cows can make white milk, but white cows can’t make chocolate milk. The later would be culture appropriation. All cows should make pink milk. Those that can’t make pink milk have toxic moosculinity. I simply want all cows fArmed.

      • So if chocolate milk comes from brown cows and strawberry milk from pink ones (which are more rare of course) hence being more expensive. Why do they use a rabbit in the commercials? Whole things just confusing.

        • Because rabbits provide the magic pixie dust that keeps the grumpaloos flying, and makes unicorn farts into a power source. Its real easy, this loony left business. Just make up some foolish bullshit. Then, convince others to believe it. THAT’S the difficult bit…. But I don’t have to do that, since I’m only poking fun at the mental midgets that they manage to fool.

  15. We are not a democracy… 51% cannot vote to enslave or free 49%. It has worked well for us so far.

  19. Worth considering is timing. It’s closing in on an election and the usual suspects are using the Second Amendment as a talking point, so it’s in people’s minds.

    Also consider the usual plot points that gun owners are less likely to answer a poll for the usual reasons.

    And yes, the polls are usually structured to push you a certain way.

  20. If 78% of the voting population wanted government to make it illegal to resist rape, would that mean government should make it illegal to resist rape?

    NO! Government should NEVER interfere with anyone’s ability to resist rape — nor interfere with anyone’s ability to resist robbery and murder. And since a firearm is an integral aspect of resisting rape, robbery, and murder, government must NEVER interfere with our ability to acquire, own, and possess firearms for the purpose of resisting rape, robbery, and murder.

    • We live in a (supposedly) Constitutional Republic, not a democracy. Now, there’s some democratic functions within our Republic, i.e. when you vote for the mayor, representatives, or whether there should be a $0.01 tax on bleu cheese dressing it’s usually just a popular vote, a feature of a democracy.

      At it’s base, democracy is mob rule. 50 percent +1 and whatever you’re bellyaching about gets put into action. Again, whether it’s a tax on cheese or something more nefarious like gun control.

      But for the bigger functions, we live in a Constitutional Republic, where the Constitution defines certain things, i.e. enumerated rights. Those rights were enumerated specifically to protect from mob rule. 50 percent +1 could vote to take your car “for the good of society” and legally they wouldn’t be able to do it. You purchased that car, it’s yours. Conveniently enough if they try to take it by force by threatening you, you can defend yourself. Because you have the Fourth Amendment acknowledging your right to keep your property, and you have the Second Amendment acknowledging your right to defend yourself if the mob points a gun at you to take your car.

      So yeah, 6 out of 10 people could actually want stricter gun laws, but it’s irrelevant because when it comes to enumerated rights, majority-rules is complete bullshit.

  21. Who do they survey? I’m over 50 and been shooting since I was 14. I’ve never been called for a survey.

    • you probably work for a living. Employed people arr much less likely to participate in surveys, it is part of the reason they always skew left.

  22. I don’t think 6 of 10 really give a rat’s ass about gun control. What they really want is to hear less about people getting shot. Even though people getting shot is dramatically less than it was 25 years ago, they are probably hearing about people getting shot more than ever. They’ve been told by the “experts” that gun control is the way to stop it and most of them never stop to really think about what they are being asked when the question is framed to support gun control.

    It’s a never ending battle to get people to think critically about gun control.

  24. The issue is that about 70% of the public has no idea that gun shows aren’t a free-for-all of unregulated arms commerce and don’t know that every licensed dealer must by law already perform a background check on any firearm sales no matter where they are. Nearly as many think ‘assault weapons’ are fully automatic.

    • Re: the assault weapons thing. That’s a feature not a bug.

      While the term “assault weapon” existed in marketing material prior to the AWB, the term was deliberately co-opted and conflated with “assault rifle” by the enemy in order to ram through the AWB. They explicitly exploited the ignorance of the electorate to get it passed. People indeed thought a bog-standard semi-automatic AR-15 was an M16.

  30. Did they ask you guys? I didn’t get asked. They need to change their name to ‘Gallop’; as in get on a horse and gallop as far from gun owners as possible. They’re probably calling the next election for Hillary as we speak.

  31. Let’s be honest here, how many of these same folks have any idea what current gun laws are already on the books?

    • “Let’s be honest here, how many of these same folks have any idea what current gun laws are already on the books?”

      NONE?

      Otherwise, why would they keep calling for laws which were passed DECADES ago?

      I recall years ago, news anchor and serial drunk driver Walter Jacobson once said live on air in Chicago that it was legal to buy machine guns through the mail. His “proof”? An ad for a plastic toy BB GUN in the back of “Soldier of Fortune” magazine. In his defense, that was probably just the liquor talking…

  33. Majority favors depriving rights of minority, more at 11.

    Public opinion is irrelevant. Keeping and bearing of arms is a protected individual right under the Constitution.

  34. fake news

    they ask people if their first and last names are comprised of both vowels and consonants and if they say yes they put them in the anti gun column

  35. Starving Polish Jews were in favor of being “resettled to the East”… until they found out what that REALLY meant.

    ALL gun control advocacy is based on lies, just as is ALL Holocaust denial.

    When you educate people on what gun control REALLY means, they turn against it.

  36. By carefully phrasing the question and/or taking the location of the question into account you can literally make any question so that the majority of the people involved either support it or don’t. For example, let’s say that you stand on the sidewalk in a major American city and ask those people coming by “Do you think that there should be restrictions on abortion?” While many will say “No” there will be some that will say “Yes”. Now ask that same question in front of a Planned Parenthood office and see what the result is.

  37. Always remember Poll Data is comprised of responses from people who had nothing better to do at the time than answer polling questions posed by strangers over the phone!

  38. Notice from the news coverage of this poll virtually no news outlets are showing this went down, from 67% to 60%/ This spiked up from parkland and has been falling ever since.

    The actual story is “support for more gun control is falling” This will be down to 45% in a year.

    support in my ultra left wing jurisdiction for total handgun ban 10 years ago was 82%, it is 51% today.

    gallup does not mention there are peaks after a big shooting but the the overall trend is down. go look at long term polls for handgun bans, national registration, assult rifle bans, they are all down over long term trends.

  39. If you study U.S. Gov’t census data you can determine many things. So Gallup can do a random poll on particular subjects.
    Take the ZIP CODE and AREA CODES for Anchorage , Alaska and Portland, Oregon about whether salmon fishing is good for the diet, or take the area code 202 and 312 and 323 and ask about gun control, er “gun safety” and you can get what ever result you want.
    Or code 702 and ask if gambling should be against the law…
    Random polls do not have to be crap-shoots.
    That is a reason why presidential elections do not always agree with te pollsters.

  40. Remember when polls told us that the evil Hilldog had a 92% chance to win the 2016 election?
    Yeah, put your faith in polls.

  41. Exactly what was the wording of the question of questions asked. What was the basis for selection of those questioned or polled.

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