School Shootings May Trigger Further Gun-Control Debate

Oct. 3, 2006 — -- The latest spate of school shootings likely will fuel a fresh round of debate on gun violence and gun control in this country.

One place to start in understanding public attitudes on the subject is with this statistic: Around 40 percent of American households own a gun -- about half of those, a handgun.

Gun ownership, though, is not at all inconsistent with support for some gun-control measures.

Polling in the last several years has found that most Americans, somewhat shy of six in 10, support stricter gun-control laws in general.

But beneath that, overall sentiment is a wide range of attitudes on specific measures.

Nine in 10 have favored background checks on would-be gun purchasers, and steps like banning assault weapons, mandatory trigger locks, and gun registration have been broadly popular.

Yet, other measures, such as banning handguns for anyone but the police, have been broadly unpopular.

And when a Gallup poll last year gave the option of keeping current gun laws as they are, rather than the more common "support/oppose stronger laws," support for tougher laws slipped to 52 percent.

A few factors -- some competing -- inform these views.

On one hand, gun violence is an obvious concern; on the other, three-quarters of Americans believe the Constitution guarantees individuals the right to own guns.

President Bush's well-targeted comment in the second debate in the 2000 presidential campaign spoke directly to general public skepticism about the effectiveness of legislating behavior -- a skepticism that gun-control opponents, among others, have used to good advantage.

"It's really a matter of culture," Bush said. "It's a culture that, somewhere along the line, we've begun to disrespect life. … We can enforce law. But there seems to be a lot of preoccupation on -- not certainly only in this debate, but just in general -- on law. But there's a larger law. Love your neighbor like you would like to be loved yourself."