As the Senate prepares to vote on a series of gun measures Wednesday afternoon, recent polls show a slim majority of Americans place a higher priority on enacting new gun laws to reduce gun violence over protecting the right to own guns. Yet, support for toughening up gun laws has dropped since the Newtown, Conn., school shooting in mid-December.
As the weeks and months have passed since the Newtown tragedy, the public’s resolve to enact stricter gun laws has softened, which may also explain what is happening on Capitol Hill. An AP/GfK poll conducted in the last week found that support for enacting stricter gun laws is now at 49 percent; down from 58 percent in January.
With agreement on a measure to shore up background checks on gun buyers faltering in the Senate, a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted late last week found that the public continues to stand firmly behind increased background checks. Nearly 9 in 10 Americans (including majorities across party lines) support background checks for gun purchases at gun shows and online.
And Americans over all also still support nationwide bans on both assault weapons and high capacity magazines - Democratic-backed amendments that are not expected to pass in the Senate on Wednesday.
If the Senate fails to pass any gun control measures, the AP/GfK poll found, a 56 percent majority of Americans would like President Obama and Congressional Democrats to keep trying to make a deal with Congressional Republicans.
Both nationwide telephone surveys were conducted on both landlines and cellphones and have margins of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. The Post/ABC News poll was conducted April 11-14 with 1,003 adults while the AP-GfK poll was conducted April 11-15 with 1,004 adults.
