(Gallup) Majorities of Americans continue to favor stricter gun laws and an assault weapons ban in the U.S., but the public remains largely opposed to a ban on handguns.
A stable 56% of U.S. adults support stricter laws covering the sale of firearms in general, while 33% prefer the laws be kept as they are now and 10% want them to be less strict.
Americans continue to oppose an outright ban on handgun possession. In fact, the 20% of U.S. adults who would favor a law banning the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons, is down seven percentage points from last year and statistically tied with the 19% record low in the 65-year trend.
Americans are much more inclined to favor a ban on assault weapons, with a slim 52% majority saying there should be a ban on the manufacture, possession and sale of semiautomatic guns, known as assault rifles. However, the current level of support is lower than what Gallup measured in two prior surveys.
These data are from Gallup’s Oct. 1-12 Crime poll.
Stricter Gun Laws in U.S. Preferred by Steady 56%
The 56% of Americans preferring stricter laws for gun sales has been steady over the past three years. The high point in support for this measure, which Gallup has tracked since 1990, was 78% in 1990 favoring stricter gun laws at a time when the nation’s crime rate was high.
Since then, calls for tougher gun control have generally spiked in the wake of prominent mass shootings and fallen as the media coverage of each has faded. The most recent example of this was in the aftermath of the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that claimed the lives of 21 people. In the month after the attack, support for stricter gun laws jumped to 66%. Yet, by October 2022, the reading had fallen to 57%, about the level where it has remained since.
