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Fewer Americans want stricter gun control

Despite a level of mass-shootings unimaginable in other rich countries

DESPITE MAKING up just 4% of the world’s population, Americans hold an estimated half of all civilian firearms (393m of 857m). On Saturday one of those gun-owners walked into a grocery store in a predominantly black neighbourhood of Buffalo, New York with a semi-automatic assault rifle. He shot 13 people, 11 of them black, in what police say was a racially motivated crime.

Ten died, making it the year’s deadliest gun incident (the deadliest shooting in 2021, in Boulder, Colorado also claimed 10 lives). The Buffalo attack was the 198th mass shooting in the country so far in 2022—a level of carnage that is unimaginable in other rich countries. Despite the increasing toll and frequency of such shootings, the most recent Gallup poll showed public support for stricter gun laws was at its lowest level since 2014. Gun ownership is diversifying: women and minorities are buying guns for self-defence.

According to a Gallup poll conducted in 2021, only 52% of Americans believe that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made stricter, down from 67% in 2018. In 1960, when Gallup first asked Americans their views on banning handguns, 60% were in favour. Last year only 19% said the same. And views on semi-automatic guns, often the weapon of choice for mass shooters, are evenly split too. In 2019, 47% of Americans said they supported a ban on them, while 51% were against one.

The partisan gap on gun control is greater than ever, and growing wider. In 2001 Democrats were more likely than Republicans to call for stricter gun laws, by a margin of 17 percentage points. In two decades this gap has quadrupled, to 67 percentage points. Still, there are some measures on which red and blue voters find common ground. A recent poll by Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, found bipartisan support for preventing people with mental illnesses from buying guns, and for making those who purchase them privately or at a gun show subject to background checks. But whether such measures can stem the tide of violence is unclear: in 2021 alone, Americans bought 18.5m guns.

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