Polls consistently show that over the last couple decades more people are opposing more gun control

The most recent CNN poll shows more people ever recorded opposing more gun control (UPDATED CNN poll). From CNN, 52% of Americans oppose stricter gun control. The previous high opposition was 55% in September 2014. The average opposition since 1989 was 40%, so the current opposition is 12% higher than the average.

The latest Gallup and CNN polls both show the exact same favor and opposition to more gun control (50% oppose / 49% favor).  The Gallup poll numbers aren’t a record high, but they do show a general trend towards opposition and that all the poll values of 50 percent or more opposing more gun control occurring since 2009.

UPDATED: The most recent Pew Poll data is from August 2016 and at that time it showed slightly more people approving more gun control than opposing it. Given the changes in the CNN and Gallup polls over the last year, it seems likely that the Pew Poll would have also changed to be more like the results shown by these other polls.

The question is if Americans are evenly divided on having new gun control, how accurate can it be when gun control proponents claim that people want more gun control?

An interesting idea might be to relate voters views on intensity of the gun control issue with media coverage. Danny Hayes at the Washington Post writes “The Media don’t care about gun control anymore.” The question is whether is the media that is driving the debate or whether it is the readers. My guess is that much of his graph on “gun control stories per week” can be explained by the severity of the attack.

Generally though few people place guns as the most important issue facing the country (see here, here, here).

UPDATE: The newest Gallup from late January confirms this trend: “Americans’ Dissatisfaction With Gun Laws Highest Since 2001.” While dissatisfaction is up, what is interesting to note is that most of the increase is from people who want less strict gun control laws. Since 2012 the percent who want less strict laws has increased from 8 to 16 percent. The percent who wanted looser gun laws actually tripled over the last year.