Majority backs tougher gun laws, but don’t think lawmakers will act: poll

Most Americans want their representatives to take action for tougher gun laws but have little faith that lawmakers will follow through, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans want strong or moderate restrictions placed on firearms, with a majority extending across party lines to include 85 percent of Democrats and 57 percent of Republicans.

The majority  — 55 percent — said they wanted policies to make it tougher to own guns as an effort to curb gun violence. Only 10 percent said making firearm ownership easier would help stop gun violence. 

{mosads}Only 8 percent of respondents said they felt “very confident” their elected representatives would do anything to curb gun violence and just 14 percent said they were “very confident” their representatives even understood their views on firearms.

The Reuters/Ipsos found that Democrats and Republicans both favored several options for implementing gun control.

The overwhelming majority — 87 percent — favored banning the mentally ill from owning guns and 84 percent favored expanding background checks. Eighty percent favored tracking firearms sales with a U.S. database.

Americans also favored implementing bans on high capacity ammo clips by 70 percent, assault weapons by 69 percent and online ammo sales by 64 percent.

The poll was released just days before the one-year anniversary of the Parkland, Fla., school shooting, that left 17 people dead at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2017.

The deadliest high school shooting in U.S. history launched a wave of gun control reforms across 20 states, according to Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. 

The National Rifle Association was outspent by gun control advocates in November’s midterm elections and said fundraising has fallen since President Trump’s 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton.

“There’s less to do because we’ve been so successful over the years,” NRA spokeswoman Jennifer Baker told Reuters. “We continue to defeat gun control legislation across the country while passing gun rights legislation.”

The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in the U.S. between Jan. 11-Jan. 28 among 6,813 adults, including 2,701 self-described Democrats and 2,359 self-described Republicans. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.