Poll: Half of gun owners say mass shootings are something society must accept

Slightly more than half of U.S. gun owners say that mass shootings are something a free society has to accept, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Thursday.

Fifty-one percent of U.S. gun owners said in the survey that mass shootings are “unfortunately” something a free society must accept, while 67 percent of respondents who don’t own guns said mass shootings could be stopped if an effort was put in to prevent them. 

And 63 percent of all Americans said mass shootings, like those seen in Orlando, Fla., Las Vegas and Newtown, Conn., could be stopped in the future. 

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The poll’s release comes on the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, which left 20 children and 6 adults dead. 

Since Sandy Hook, the U.S. has been plagued by a series of mass shootings, including those at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando in 2016, as well as the Las Vegas shooting in October that took the lives of 58 people and left hundreds more injured. 

A gunman took the lives of 26 people at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, last month. 

Among gun owners in the new survey, 61 percent says guns make America “free,” while 59 percent say they make the U.S. “safe” and 55 percent say “strong.”

Among people who aren’t gun owners, 55 percent see firearms as making America “dangerous.”

The CBS News/YouGov poll was conducted on December 5-11, among 2073 U.S. adults. The margin of error was 2.7 percentage points.