Gun Control Views Unchanged in Wake of Aurora Shooting
Americans remain largely split on whether the country needs stricter gun laws.
| Posted Monday, July 30, 2012, at 5:54 PM
Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.
The Aurora movie theater shooting that killed 12 and injured scores more has stirred plenty of debate about gun control—but all that talk has done little to change anyone's minds, or build a consensus, according to a new poll out Monday.
The Pew survey found that in the wake of the movie massacre 47 percent of Americans said they placed more of a priority on controlling gun ownership than on protecting the rights of Americans to own guns. Forty-six percent of respondents, meanwhile, said the latter was more important than the former. Those numbers are largely unchanged from April, when the Pew split was 49-45 in favor gun rights.
Pew pollsters pointed out that other recent episodes of gun violence—such as the one that took place at Virginia Tech in 2007 or in Tuscon, Arizona in 2011— likewise had little effect on voters’ opinions on the topic.
More from Pew:
"Public opinion about gun control and gun rights has been divided since early 2009. Prior to that, going back to the first Pew Research Center polling on this issue in 1993, majorities consistently rated controlling gun ownership as a higher priority than protecting the rights of Americans to own guns."
Roughly two-thirds of Americans said that shootings like the one in Colorado this month are isolated acts of troubled individuals, and less than a quarter of the population said such shootings reflected broader societal problems in America.
The survey was conducted from July 26 to 29. Full results here.
