Voter Support for Stricter Gun Control Reaches New High

As Congress moves closer than it has in years to passing gun safety legislation following the recent mass shootings in Texas and New York, a new Morning Consult/Politico survey shows voter support for gun control has reached a new high.

Record support for stricter gun laws

• According to the June 10-12 survey, 68% of voters support stricter gun control laws, higher than the previous record of 66%, which was set after the 2019 mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio.
• Support for stricter gun control among all voters is up 8 percentage points since immediately after the May 14 shooting in Buffalo, N.Y., which was followed by the May 24 shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. Opposition to such measures  has fallen from 32% to 27% over that time frame.
• Record-high shares of Democrats (90%) and independents (67%) back stronger gun restrictions, compared with 44% of Republicans, which is 5 points shy of a record set after the Las Vegas mass shooting in October 2017. Half of Republican voters (51%) oppose tougher gun laws, including 34% who do so “strongly.” 

How Congress is handling gun control

The durability of support for stricter gun control measures in the weeks since the Uvalde shooting comes as Congress continues to press ahead with legislation on gun and school safety. 

The House has passed a package of bills directly related to guns that is a nonstarter in the evenly divided Senate, where a bipartisan group of lawmakers — including 10 Republicans, enough to potentially overcome a filibuster — is drafting a narrower legislative response that Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) likened to a “few single important steps” on a “thousand-mile journey.” The lead Democratic negotiator on the legislation, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, is pushing for passage before the July 4 congressional recess, and legislative text may be released later this week.

The latest survey, along with previous research that found a majority of voters support a range of gun restrictions, suggests there is political will among voters for Congress to go further despite the posture of most Republican lawmakers. For example, 80% of voters, including 73% of Republicans, support requiring purchasers of assault-style weapons to be at least 21 years of age.    

The latest Morning Consult/Politico survey was conducted June 10-12, 2022, among a representative sample of 2,005 registered U.S. voters, with an unweighted margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.