Poll: Support for more gun control slips

Nearly a year after the shooting at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school, support for stricter gun control has slipped, according to a new poll from CBS News.

According to the survey, 49 percent of Americans say they want the government to impose stricter gun laws. By contrast, 36 percent favor keeping gun laws as is, and 12 percent say the nation should loosen restrictions on purchasing and owning firearms.

{mosads}That’s down from 57 percent of Americans who said gun laws should be made stricter in the aftermath of the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting. At that point, 9 percent said laws should be less strict, and three in 10 Americans said they should be kept as is.

Also, a significant partisan divide remains on gun control. While 7 in 10 Democrats think laws should be stricter, 55 percent of Republicans favor maintaining the status quo. Independents mirror the population at large: 47 percent favor stricter gun laws, while 37 percent want to keep them as are.

Gun owners are more likely to advocate for stricter gun laws, 26 percent, than looser ones, 19 percent. Still, a 53 percent majority favors keeping things as is.

President Obama will mark the anniversary of the shooting that left 20 schoolchildren and six educators dead with a moment of silence on Saturday.  

Still unclear is whether the White House will use the anniversary to renew its call for expanded background checks. Efforts to do so earlier this year were stymied in the Senate.

On Tuesday, Vice President Biden announced $100 million in funding for mental health services and facilities at a White House event with families of the victims.

Separately, Organizing for Action (OFA), the political advocacy group born from the Obama-Biden reelection campaign, has already asked supporters to host events around the Newtown anniversary, calling on “Congress to finally take action to make our communities safer.”

OFA said it intends the events to be a “powerful reminder of what we lost a year ago, and a reminder that we as a nation need to do more to prevent gun violence and keep our communities safe.”