Does the United States need stricter gun control laws?: Most Americans say “No” by a 49% to 42% margin.

Rasmussen Reports has a new survey on support for stricter gun control laws. They interviewed 1,000 Americans from January 30-31, 2022 and the margin of error in the survey was +/-3%. By a 49%-to-42% margin, Americans opposed stricter gun control. This is slightly larger than a recent Quinnipiac University Poll from last November that found Americans oppose stricter gun control laws by a 49% to 45% margin.

Those groups who were clearly in favor of more regulations were blacks, Democrats, people earning more than $200,000 per year, and government workers. Those who clearly opposed more regulations were men; people aged 40 to 64; whites; Republicans and others; married; people who worked for private companies, retired and others; and investors.

The most interesting response was the cross-tabs for another question asked in the survey: Does the United States need stricter enforcement of existing gun control laws? While those who said that we need stricter enforcement were more likely to say that we need stricter laws (62%-to-31%), those who didn’t think that we needed stricter enforcement were strongly against having new laws (91%-to-7%). Those who oppose stricter gun control laws apparently don’t think that it is very useful to enforce the gun control laws that we have.