Would Stricter Background Checks Prevented Mass Shootings

(CNN)In the wake of the 2018 mass schoolhouse shooting in Parkland, Florida, a new generation of teen activists emerged who insisted that the onetime boom/bust cycle of gun control politics in this country was no more than.

Gone would be the public'south short attending bridge on the need for more restrictions on gun sales and gun ownership. And in its identify would exist a sustained campaign to proceed the issues of guns -- and the mass shootings committed with them -- front and center in the public'south listen.

Well-nigh 4 years on from Parkland, notwithstanding, a familiar bicycle has asserted itself.

Just 52% of Americans polled now say that the "laws roofing the sales of firearms" should be stricter than they currently are, the lowest number that Gallup has measured on the question since 2014.

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That marks a remarkable erosion on the question from just three years agone as the country was withal reeling from the 17 people killed in Parkland. At that signal, two thirds of respondents favored more than strict gun laws.

In 2019, at that place were all the same 64% of people who told Gallup they wanted stricter gun laws. That dropped to 57% in 2020 and now 52% in 2021.

Every bit Gallup noted in its release: "Americans' support for stricter gun laws has typically risen in the aftermath of high-profile mass shootings and fallen during periods without such events. Changes in the party occupying the White Business firm may too influence preferences for gun laws. Mostly, the public favors stricter laws when Republicans are in role and less strict laws when Democrats are."

At that place is no question there is some truth to that sentiment. Not just did support for stricter gun laws stay higher for more than a yr following the Parkland shooting, state legislatures took unprecedented deportment to limit guns.

As Pew noted in 2018: "This was a year of unparalleled success for the gun-command movement in the United States. States across the land, including 14 with Republican governors, enacted fifty new laws restricting access to guns, ranging from banning bump stocks to assuasive authorities to temporarily disarm potentially violent people."

Just, at least at the federal level, legislative momentum has been harder to harness.

Commemorating the iii-year anniversary of the Parkland shooting this by February, President Joe Biden called on Congress to act.

"I am calling on Congress to enact commonsense gun law reforms, including requiring background checks on all gun sales, banning assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and eliminating amnesty for gun manufacturers who knowingly put weapons of war on our streets," Biden said. "We owe it to all those nosotros've lost and to all those left behind to grieve to make a alter. The time to act is at present."

While the Democratic-led Firm passed two measures to strengthen background checks, the Senate is non expected to act on either i.

Meanwhile, Americans are buying more than guns than ever earlier. In 2020, nearly 23 1000000 guns were bought -- a record. That surge has connected through 2021.

And, there has been no letup in mass shootings either. Co-ordinate to the Gun Violence Annal, there take been 638 mass shootings so far in 2021. (The site defines a mass shooting as one with 4 or more victims, either injured or killed, not including the gunman.)

Then, what happened? It appears that after an extended menses of time in which the public was supportive of more than strict gun laws, the old political rules of the gun debate take reasserted themselves.

A new Quinnipiac poll besides out this week finds registered voters split 47% to 48% between supporting stricter gun laws and opposing them. That'due south as well the everyman back up for stricter gun laws among voters since belatedly 2015 in Quinnipiac's polling. In Feb 2018, it reached a high of 66% in their poll. A Pew Research poll back in April this twelvemonth institute a more often than not similar pattern.

What Parkland did was keep the issue in the news -- and on peoples' minds -- longer. But these latest numbers from Gallup suggest the effect has now begun to recede again.