More Americans Support Gun Rights Than Gun Control For First Time In Two Decades, According To Poll

Generally in America, the support for gun control has outweighed the support for gun rights. The pro-gun control movement became more of a majority after the incident happening at Sandy Hook Elementary. It was also enforced with news of other shootings, such as the Aurora Theater Shooting.

Since then, the Inquisitr has reported on the latest news pertaining to gun control, gun rights, and gun crime. Pertaining to gun control, Bill Gates defeated the National Rifle Association, in which Washington state has now passed strict gun control laws. For potential gun crime, 3D printers are now able to create guns at home and provide unlimited bullets.

For gun rights activists and Second Amendment supporters, they received a major uptick in prominent substructure to bare arms. A survey among Americans now shows that the majority are in support of gun rights over gun control.

According to Yahoo! News, support for gun rights now outweighs the support for gun control by a margin of 52 percent to 46 percent. It was conducted by the Pew Research Center and released on Wednesday. It is also the first time Pew found more support for gun ownership and rights over gun control in more than two decades since the survey was issued.

“Support for gun rights has edged up from earlier this year, and marks a substantial shift in attitudes since shortly after the Newton school shooting.”

The Newtown school shooting that the Pew Research Center is referring to is specifically Sandy Hook Elementary, a tragic event in which a gunman killed 27 people, then himself. As a result of that incident, 45 percent of Americans supported gun rights, while 51 percent supported gun control.

Getting back to the present percentages, African Americans have shown a dramatic shift in opinion, in which the majority of them — 54 percent — now say gun ownership does more to protect people than endanger personal safety. Two years ago, only 29 percent of African Americans held that view. Among whites, pro-gun views have risen from 54 percent in December of 2012 to 62 percent. Finally, the partisan differences among the two major political parties have widened.

“As was the case in December 2012, a majority of Democrats (60 percent) say guns do more to put people’s safety at risk, while only about a third (35 percent) say they do more to protect people from becoming crime victims. By contrast, 8 in 10 Republicans say guns do more to protect people from becoming crime victims, up 17 points from December 2012.”

NPR provided percentages of past surveys to compare with present percentages. This was done to compare how much of a shift there’s been pertaining to gun rights and gun control. Back in April 2007, for example, the Pew survey found 32 percent of Americans supported gun rights, while 60 percent supported gun control. Today’s percentages are more even, and the percentage who pleaded the fifth or were undecided has gone down too.

One point that needs to be taken into account is the survey’s margin of error, which is 2.9 percentage points. If the margin of error were to be incorporated, support for gun rights would still be the majority, but only by 0.2 percent.

What do you think of Pew Research Center’s survey results that more Americans support gun rights over gun control? Just like the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary was the catalyst that skyrocketed support for gun control, what events do you think happened that contributed to gun right support now being the majority among Americans?

[Post image via Bing]