Gun Ownership Survey Results Show Surprising Trends

It’s hard to get good survey data on firearms related issues for a number of reasons, which we’ll detail below, but new data indicates that gun owners are a diverse community and provides more evidence that the recent surge in gun sales was not restricted along partisan, racial, or gender lines.

The latest data from Rasmussen Reports shows a twelve-point decrease in the proportion of likely voters who believe that the United States needs stricter gun control laws, falling from a record-high 64% last summer to 52% this year. This finding, of course, does not capture awareness of existing gun control laws. The last time Rasmussen asked about stricter enforcement of existing gun control was in November 2017 and two-thirds of respondents agreed that the United States needed stricter enforcement.

In recent years, Rasmussen has only asked its question on stricter gun control in the immediate aftermath of high-profile mass shootings. These incidents certainly bias the results. As we’ve seen, opportunistic gun control advocates use tragedy to push their agenda. This is not the only survey data point impacted by political realities.