The tragedy in Newtown, Conn., will surely spur pollsters to ask Americans again about guns, gun ownership, gun laws and the Second Amendment.
If recent experience is a good guide, public opinion may not shift too much.
A gun shop in Glendale, Calif.
Gabriel Bouys /AFP/Getty Images
Pew Research Center writes that:
The murders of 20 small children and six adults at an elementary school could be just so shocking, of course, that it will move opinion.
The one relatively recent point in time where polls done by both Pew and Gallup show a significant upward movement in favor of making gun laws “more strict” or of making gun “control” more important than protecting “the rights of Americans to own guns” was after the April 1999 attack by two students at Colorado’s Columbine High School. They killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives. In both organizations’ polls, public opinion in favor of “gun control” hit 66 percent.
Since then, both polling organizations show support more or less steadily declining into the low 40s.
Opinion also might be moved by very public calls by some prominent leaders (such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg) for stricter gun laws.
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How public opinion has changed in recent decades.
How public opinion has changed in recent decades.
We’ll watch for polling on the issue in coming days and weeks.
Article source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/12/15/167332570/will-newtown-killings-shift-publics-attitude-on-guns?ft=1&f=1001