Survey reveals why gun debate seldom sways
WASHINGTON — Americans who own guns and those who don’t have starkly differing views about weapons, their role in society and their relationship toc rime—disagreementsthat help explain why the national debate over gun control seldom moves.
About 30 percent of Americans own a gun, most of those more than one. A roughly equal number not only don’t own a firearm but also say they can’t see themselves ever having one.
The numbers, from a major new study of gun ownership and attitudes toward guns by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, depict two camps that have become isolated from each other, even as the share of Americans who own a gun has declined in recent decades.
Protection vs. hunting
Gun owners are much more likely to live in rural areas, non-owners in cities. Gun ownership is most common in the South, least common in the Northeast. Almost half of white men say they own a gun; only about a quarter of minority men, and fewer women, say the same.
The reasons for owning a gun appear to have shifted, as well. Among people over 65 who grew up in gun-owning households, about 8 in 10 say the main reason then was hunting. That drops to half for those under 30 who grew up in a house with a gun.
Today, the most widely given reason for owning a gun is protection, cited by about two-thirds of gun owners surveyed. About one-third cited hunting as a major reason, and fewer, about 1 in 8 gun owners, said they hunt often.
Non-owners tend to associate guns with violence. About 6 in 10 non-owners call gun violence a “big problem” in the U.S. and about two-thirds say that the ease with which people can legally get a gun contributes a “great deal or a fair amount to gun violence.”
By contrast, only about a third of gun owners label gun violence as a big problem nationally. About 4 in 10 gun owners say that the ease of legally getting a weapon contributes a great deal or fair amount to that problem.
Illegal sales a problem
Majorities of both gun owners and non-owners groups agree that illegal gun purchases are a serious problem, and they agree on keeping guns away from the mentally ill, performing background checks for private sales of weapons and sales at gun shows, and requiring permits for concealed carry.
On most other policy issues related to guns, however, owners and nonowners have sharply differing views. About threequarters of non-owners, for example, favor a ban on assault-style weapons, but fewer than half of gun owners agree. A similar divide exists over proposals to limit the size of ammunition magazines.
Overall, however, respondents expressed a certain fatalism about violence. About three-quarters said that if someone wants to kill or harm another person, they’ll find a way to do it, gun or no gun.