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More than 60,000 people attended the 2012 NRA convention in St. Louis, Missouri. Photograph: Whitney Curtis/Getty Images
More than 60,000 people attended the 2012 NRA convention in St. Louis, Missouri. Photograph: Whitney Curtis/Getty Images

After Newtown, does the US want tougher gun control laws?

This article is more than 11 years old
Support for tighter gun laws peaked after the 1999 Columbine massacre, but currently fewer than half of Americans back them

The horrific shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, has already heralded calls for tighter gun control, but will this latest massacre actually result in a measurable change in American opinion on guns?

Support for stricter gun control laws is at an all-time low. The percentage of Americans who want stronger gun laws is currently below 50% in the vast majority of surveys. The proportion of Americans yearning for tighter gun controls has been dropping by a point or two every year since 1990. Nearly three-quarters of US citizens, 73%, believe that the second amendment guarantees citizens the right to own guns.

The only event in the past 20 years that reshaped the gun control debate at all was the Columbine school shootings.

Gun control polling

As this chart from Mark Blumenthal illustrates, the percentage of Americans who wanted stricter gun control measures spiked by about five to 10 percentage points after Columbine. A similar jump after Newtown would result in a revived majority of Americans wanting stronger measures.

Keep in mind, though, that there have been many mass shootings since 1999, and none of them resulted in Americans changing their opinions on gun control. This includes a number of school shootings, and the mass killings carried out at Virginia Tech in 2007. Columbine's ability to change opinion may merely have been unique.

That said, no shootings over the past 13 years have been on the same scale as that of Newtown: 27 people have been killed, of whom 20 were children. But even if Newtown does change the way Americans think about guns, there's no guarantee it will last. As Blumenthal also noted, the spike after Columbine quickly faded.

That's not to say there isn't support for gun control in America. A majority of Americans can agree that current gun laws must be enforced: altogether, 86% of Americans want some gun control restrictions, or want guns to be illegal; 55% of Americans want the current gun laws or even tighter ones to be on the books.

In addition, two specific gun laws not currently on the books in many states already had major public support before Newtown. More than three in four, or 76%, of Americans want laws "requiring gun owners to register their guns with the local government". And 60% of Americans are against "high-capacity or extended ammunition clips".

Gun control advocates would be wise to push proposals that implement these two gun control policies. They have majority support that can only grow after Newtown. It would be more difficult for Republican senators to oppose them – as they did with a bill to ban high-capacity clips this past July, when Democratic senators introduced legislation.

As that implies, the problem those in favor of gun control will face is that guns remain a highly partisan issue.

Gun control by party

As this chart from Pew tracking the overlap of party identification with support for gun rights illustrates, support for gun control looks like the breakdown you might see in an election. Republicans legislators will likely feel little pressure for tighter regulation from their constituents; more likely, the reverse.

So, we shouldn't expect a major change in gun control politics over night. Support for stricter measures from the American public may increase incrementally, but don't expect a tremendous and sustained jump. There are, however, specific policies where gun control advocates might definitely make headway.

Editor's note: this article was amended on 18 December to clarify the description of the second graph displayed

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