More than half of Americans want stricter gun sales laws

In the wake of an October mass shooting at Umpqua Community College, 55 percent of Americans said they would like gun sales laws to be stricter than they are now, according to a Gallup survey released Monday. That's an increase of 8 percentage points from 2014. The newest report also saw a drop in the number of people who favor less strict laws than the U.S. currently has.

Most Gallup surveys since 2007 — the year of the Virginia Tech shooting — have found that a minority of Americans wanted stricter laws on gun sales. The only exception followed the Sandy Hook school shooting in December 2012, when support for stricter laws momentarily spiked to 58 percent.

Among both gun owners and non-gun owners, support for stricter laws rose in 2015. Broken down by political affiliation, a higher percentage of Democrats and independents say they want tighter control over gun sales, but among Republicans, that figure dropped by two percentage points since 2014.

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Check out Gallup's full report here.