Gun Violence Poll Shows Consensus 1 Year After Parkland

It's been a year since the school shooting that claimed 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. How to deal with gun violence still persists in the United States, and while there are partisan and racial differences, there are also areas of common ground.

A NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll, released Tuesday, found that a majority of Americans — 59 percent — when hearing about mass shootings say their first reaction is that the country needs stricter gun laws.

Compare that to the 25 percent whose first thought is that more people need to carry a gun.

For the future, the poll showed that nearly half, or 49 percent, of Americans think gun violence in this country will remain the problem that it is now, and about four in 10, or 39 percent, think it will be more of a concern.

A slim majority — 51 percent down from 71 percent in the immediate aftermath of the Parkland shooting last year — think that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be stricter.

Ten percent, up from 5 percent, said the laws should be less strict, and 36 percent said the legislation governing the sale of guns should remain the same. That is up from 23 percent previously.

Though Americans still think gun legislation is a priority for Congress, there is less urgency than there was a year ago.

Forty-two percent of those surveyed think stricter gun laws should be an immediate priority for Congress, down a full 10 percent from last April.

An additional 29 percent — up from 19 percent — think it should be a priority but not an immediate one.

Those who think it should not be a priority at all came in at 27 percent, unchanged from April.

Non-whites urge immediate action more so than whites: 53 percent to 35 percent.

"Not surprisingly, the results show that the outcry against gun violence has lessened from what it was immediately following the shooting at Parkland," said Dr. Lee Mr. Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion.

"Yet, there is a strong consensus that gun violence is a serious problem and action needs to be taken," he said.

A majority of Americans said it is more important to control gun violence (58 percent) than to protect gun rights (37 percent). Non-white residents are more likely to prioritize curbing gun violence (67 percent) over protecting gun rights (28 percent) than are white residents, who share these views (53 percent and 44 percent, respectively).

Do Americans value their right to bear arms?

Yes: 58 percent said the constitutional right to own and carry a gun is as important as free speech and religion. That includes 74 percent of Republicans, 64 percent of independents and 40 percent of Democrats.

In contrast, 31 percent of Americans, including 56 percent of Democrats, think the right to bear arms is not as important as other constitutional freedoms.

Just 10 percent of Americans argue the right to bear arms is more important.

A plurality of Americans do not think increasing gun ownership makes a difference in the amount of crime — 42 percent. Twenty-eight percent believe more guns equals more crime, including 49 percent of Republicans.

As far as measures to reduce gun violence, those surveyed decisively wanted requiring background checks for gun purchases at gun shows and other private sales (82 percent), requiring mental health checks (79 percent), employing safety resource officers or armed guards in schools (72 percent), banning high capacity ammunition clips (65 percent), creating a national database to track gun sales (64 percent) and banning the sale of semi-automatic assault guns such as the AK-47 (60 percent).

The least popular proposal to curb gun violence was allowing school teachers to carry guns, at 39 percent.

The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll surveyed 880 adults age 18 or older living in the contiguous United States from Feb. 5 through Feb. 11.

The margin of error is ±3.9 percent.

To read the complete methodology of the poll, go here.

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