More people of color support stricter gun laws than White Americans, report says
A new report from the Pew Research Center found Black adults showed the highest support for stricter laws.
By Nicole Chavez and Isabel Yip, CNN
(CNN) — While most Americans support stricter gun measures, people of color are more likely to favor them compared to White Americans, a new report says.
The Pew Research Center found Black adults showed the highest support for stricter laws, at 77%, followed by Asian adults at 74% and Hispanic adults at 68%. Meanwhile, 51% of White adults said gun laws should be stricter.
Overall, 58% of Americans said gun laws in the US should be stricter, while nearly a third said they “are about right” and 15% said they should be less strict.
Respondents were also asked about specific policy proposals. About 79% of Americans said they support increasing the minimum age for buying guns to 21 years old, and 64% said they support banning assault-style weapons.
Half of Americans said teachers and school officials should be allowed to carry guns in K-12 schools, the report said.
The study released this week was based on a randomly selected sample of 5,115 people in the US who were interviewed between June 5-11.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden marked one year since he signed into law a bipartisan gun bill – the first major gun safety legislation in decades. The law included $750 million to help states implement and run crisis intervention programs. It also closed the so-called “boyfriend loophole” in domestic violence law, went after individuals who sell guns as a primary source of income and haven’t registered as federally licensed firearms dealers and increased funding for school security and mental health programs in schools.
The Biden administration has also implemented two dozen executive actions to try to reduce gun violence. But in the absence of congressional action, the White House has turned its focus to state action to try to reduce gun violence, which has continued to plague the country.
There have been 332 mass shootings in the US so far this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that tracks gun violence in the United States. CNN and the GVA define a mass shooting as a shooting that injured or killed four or more people, not including the shooter.
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