the times they are a-changin
97 percent of Americans want universal background checks for gun buyers. 67 percent want to ban assault weapons.
A new poll by Quinnipiac University published Tuesday found that a stunning majority of Americans are in favor of more stringent gun laws. A whopping 97 percent of all respondents said they were in favor of universal background checks on all gun purchases, while 67 percent of all respondents said they were in favor of banning sales of assault weapons.
Support for universal background checks was practically uniform across all categories, including race, gender, age group, or partisan affiliation. Among Democrats, 99 percent of respondents favored universal background checks, as did 97 percent of Republicans and 98 percent of independents. Whites with college degrees and men scored the lowest rate of support — at 96 percent.
Support for an assault weapons ban was not nearly as uniform across groups, as 91 percent of Democratic voters were in favor compared to just 63 percent of independent voters. Forty-three percent of Republicans supported the proposal, while 49 percent opposed it. Still, in every demographic category besides Republicans, a majority of voters were in favor of the hypothetical ban.
Overall, 66 percent of all respondents said they were in favor of "stricter gun laws" in the U.S. Tim Malloy, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll, said that the findings represented something of an ideological sea change on gun control. "If you think Americans are largely unmoved by the mass shootings, you should think again," Malloy said. "Support for stricter gun laws is up 19 points in little more than 2 years."
The Quinnipiac poll was conducted between Feb. 16-19, just days after the mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed by a teenager armed with a semiautomatic rifle. It surveyed 1,249 voters across the country over the phone and has a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points. Read the full results here.