Even so, significant shares of gun owners are open to these proposals. Support for these proposals is much higher among non-gun owners, with about three-quarters or more saying they would support each of these proposals. At the same time, majorities of gun owners favor proposals that would expand gun rights, such as allowing people to carry concealed guns in more places and allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in K schools — proposals that are each supported by only about a third of non-owners.
There is also a partisan divide on views of gun policy, and these differences remain even after controlling for gun ownership. For example, Republican gun owners are much more resistant than Democratic gun owners to creating a database to track gun sales and banning assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.
On the flip side, Republicans are also more open to proposals that would expand gun rights. Democrats and Republicans also offer different assessments, with Democrats far more likely to describe gun violence as a very big problem, and the partisan divide remains when controlling for gun ownership.
Americans see many factors as playing a role in gun violence in the country today. Gun owners and non-owners alike point to the ease with which people can illegally obtain guns as a major contributor to gun violence in the U. The public is divided when it comes to the amount of influence the NRA has over guns laws in the U. For their part, NRA members are largely satisfied with the amount of influence the organization has over gun laws in the U.
Gun owners are more likely than non-gun owners to have ever contacted a public official to express their opinion on gun policy. Chapter 1 looks at the demographics of gun ownership and the reasons people own guns. It also explores early experiences with guns, such as growing up in a gun-owning household and participating in hunting or sport shooting.
Chapter 2 focuses on the role guns have in the daily life of gun owners, including whether they carry a gun outside their home, how often they engage in gun-related activities or consume gun-oriented media, and their social ties to other gun owners. It also looks at negative experiences some people have had with guns. Chapter 4 explores what Americans see as contributing factors to gun violence. Finally, it asked about gun ownership using two separate questions to measure personal and household ownership instead of collecting this information with a single question, as has been the case with previous Pew Research Center reports.
Despite these changes, the share of U. Both surveys are consistent with rates of gun ownership reported by the Gallup Organization , but somewhat higher than that reported by the General Social Survey GSS , which is conducted face to face. Gun ownership varies considerably across demographic groups. Like the gender gap, the education gap in gun ownership is particularly pronounced among whites. There is no significant difference in the rate of gun ownership across educational attainment among nonwhites.
Across all regions, gun ownership varies considerably between those who live in rural and urban areas, with rural dwellers far more likely than those who live in urban areas to say they own a gun. Besides demographic differences, clear partisan divides emerge when it comes to gun ownership. This partisan gap remains even after controlling for demographic differences.
Perhaps not surprisingly, those who see owning a gun as central to their overall identity are particularly committed to gun ownership. For the most part, gun owners in urban, suburban and rural areas offer similar reasons for owning guns. And across community types, about three-in-ten cite sport shooting as a major reason. Interestingly, gun owners who see their local community as unsafe are not significantly more likely than those who say they live in a safe community to say protection is central to why they own a gun.
There is a significant link, however, between owning a gun for protection and perceptions of whether the world, broadly speaking, has become more dangerous.
Growing civil unrest may have prompted people to buy guns for personal and family protection, many social scientists have posited, although this remains a matter of debate. A new UC Davis School of Medicine study about fear of violence reports: "The coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated persistent structural, economic, and social inequities in the conditions that contribute to violence and its consequences.
Who bought these guns? CBS News pointed out that over 5 million people were first-time gun buyers last year. CNN reported a sharp rise in sales to Black Americans and women. The January increase should not be taken as unusual, nor should the rise in gun sales from to be viewed as an anomaly. The number of gun sales has increased most years since Sales first topped 25 million in , 20 million in , 15 million in and 10 million in Similarly, the number of gun dealers increased by 18 percent from to The nation is long overdue for an overhaul of the laws, regulations, and administrative practices guiding and governing gun industry oversight.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives publishes an annual report that offers only the most basic information on firearm commerce in this country. However, there are key gaps and missing pieces of data that should be collected and reported for public analysis and oversight.
A more robust annual firearms commerce report should include the following:. ATF needs a substantial increase in its budget to hire additional personnel to conduct gun dealer compliance inspections. Using only a rudimentary analysis, this suggests that one IOI can inspect roughly 17 retail dealers per year, meaning that ATF would need 1, IOIs to meet its internal goal of inspecting every dealer once every three years. Federal law needs to be updated to provide ATF with sufficient tools to address licensed gun dealers who are unable or refuse to comply with all legal requirements.
Congress should enact legislation updating the federal law to give ATF additional tools to work with the industry to ensure full compliance with the law.
Increasing the options for civil penalties for gun dealers will help ensure that ATF leadership have options available that they are comfortable using and that are effective at helping dealers become fully compliant with the law.
Such legislation should authorize ATF to:. A number of bills have been introduced in Congress to address many of these gaps, including to eliminate harmful riders and increase the available penalties for noncompliant gun dealers. A substantial portion of the guns manufactured in the United States are exported to countries around the world, both for military and civilian markets. In January , the Trump administration dramatically weakened oversight of these exports by shifting oversight to the Department of Commerce and eliminating the congressional notification requirement.
This would also have the effect of restricting the ability of individuals to disseminate blueprints to make 3D printed guns or gun parts, particularly using online forums. Gun dealers have a significant responsibility to secure their dangerous inventory, and while many of them have succeeded under a voluntary honor system, it is crucial that the federal law is strengthened to actually mandate that gun dealers implement strong, commonsense security measures designed to prevent theft.
At a minimum, this should include amending federal law to require that gun dealers store all guns in secure vaults, safes, or with locking devices during the hours that the store is closed.
This is a basic step that most responsible business owners already take to protect their valuable inventory and should be a minimum requirement for all licensed gun dealers. A bill to implement this requirement has been introduced in Congress by Rep. Dick Durbin D-IL. A bill introduced by Rep.
Joseph Morelle D-NY would require the attorney general to engage in this rulemaking process and mandate that gun dealers submit a security plan to ATF detailing their approach to reducing the risk of theft consistent with the new regulations.
Gun dealer security requirements can also be imposed as a matter of state law. To date, nine states and Washington, D. The deferential approach ATF has taken regarding inspections and assessments to determine whether a firearm or accessory violates the National Firearms Act has created a clear power imbalance between ATF and gun manufacturers. Manufacturers are effectively operating outside the parameters of the law, with ATF failing to serve as a genuine check on the production of NFA firearms and firearm accessories available to the general public.
In order to fulfill its mandate and properly enforce the NFA, ATF should realign the work of the Firearms Technology Industry Services Branch to inspect the designs of firearms and firearm accessories to determine whether the firearms or accessories are capable of being used in a manner that would categorize the weapon as an NFA firearm, rather than the current approach that considers only the stated intended use of the firearm or accessory as articulated by the manufacturer.
The FTISB should also retract its guidance from December 11, , stating that it would review accessories only if they were installed in a firearm as the manufacturer intended the accessory to be used. ATF should also offer much more transparency into this decision-making process and make NFA decisions publicly available on its website.
The inability for gun owners right now to obtain this information directly from the federal agency mandated to conduct NFA reviews and assessments is problematic and makes people reliant on getting this critical information from nonofficial sources such as internet blogs and forums. ATF should publish quarterly reports of all ATF firearms classifications, removing any sensitive information as it relates to criminal investigations or privacy concerns.
Finally, ATF should conduct a comprehensive review of all NFA decisions over the past 10 years and reassess whether the findings in those cases would change based on how the firearm or accessory was used by a gun owner. One of the most glaring examples of how the law has failed to keep pace with innovation in the gun industry is the prevalence of homemade, untraceable guns made from unfinished receivers or 3D printing technology.
Congress needs to update the law to address this dangerous gap that has been exploited by the industry to sell kits and parts that allow people to make untraceable and undetectable firearms and silencers at home. The combination of an outdated law and legal interpretation by ATF has resulted in the development of a substantial subset of the consumer gun industry producing, marketing, and selling nearly finished firearm receivers and frames that can be turned into fully functional guns by individuals at home with basic tools and no specialized knowledge or skills.
Unfinished receivers pose the same risk to public safety as completed firearms and should therefore be treated the same under the law. ATF should commence a rulemaking process to update the regulations to clarify that unfinished receivers should be treated the same under the law as fully functional firearms for purposes of serial numbers and background checks.
In December , Everytown for Gun Safety filed a petition requesting this rulemaking, and in a May interview, former Acting Director of ATF Thomas Brandon revealed that he pursued efforts to reclassify some gun-making kits as firearms but was unable to make significant progress prior to his retirement. David Cicilline D-RI. Although current law places limits on the manufacture and sale of silencers, there is a robust online marketplace attempting to evade the law by offering for sale facially legal products, such as barrel shrouds or solvent traps, that actually function as silencers.
Currently, ATF is inundated with applications for silencer manufacturing licenses while the underground industry continues to produce silencers, under the moniker of barrel shrouds or solvent traps or booms. The fact that there are no data available to measure the size and scale of the homemade ammunition industry illuminates the need for regulation and oversight of this sector.
Licenses to make ammunition at home as well as licenses to sell homemade ammunition should be required, similar to licenses needed to manufacture or sell firearms. Additionally, ATF should issue guidelines on how to safely transport, store, and dispose of large quantities of homemade ammunition as well as the highly flammable propellent powder used to make ammunition cartridges. Since , there have been calls to create some form of safety regulation of the firearms industry, either by granting the Consumer Product Safety Commission jurisdiction over these products or empowering ATF to serve in that role.
Firearms and ammunition manufactures have enjoyed unprecedented freedom from meaningful federal safety regulations for far too long. Congress must pass legislation to empower a federal regulatory agency to monitor guns and ammunition for safety risks, work with the industry to create standards for these products to minimize accidents, and issue recalls to protect consumers from known design flaws and defects in these already inherently dangerous products.
The CPSC is well-positioned to serve this function, and legislation has been introduced in Congress to amend consumer product safety laws to expand the definition of consumer products to include firearms and ammunition.
Regardless of which agency was empowered with this function, Congress would also need to provide sufficient additional funding to enable that agency to complete it effectively. By immunizing the gun industry from most civil lawsuits, PLCAA has effectively absolved gun-makers and dealers from any responsibility to take affirmative steps to help prevent dangerous or illegal use of their products and removed an incentive for the industry to innovate to improve the safety of its products and commercial channels used to sell them.
This law has also harmed victims and survivors of gun violence by shutting the courthouse doors to most claims against the industry for damages caused by gun industry products and practices, leaving them without recourse to recoup financial losses.
Bills to repeal PLCAA and put the gun industry back on the same footing as most other potentially dangerous consumer product industries have been introduced in both houses of Congress. The gun industry is a primary player in the public health epidemic of gun violence yet receives very little attention in the national debate over how to address the problem.
The gun industry has a tremendous responsibility to take affirmative steps to help ensure that the weapons it puts into communities in the United States and abroad do not continue to cause devastating harm. And it is far past time for our laws and administrative policies to catch up to that reality. Her work focuses on advocating for progressive laws and policies relating to gun violence prevention and the criminal justice system at the federal, state, and local levels. In this role, she has helped develop measures to strengthen gun laws and reduce gun violence that have been included in federal and state legislation and executive actions.
Prior to joining the Center, Parsons was general counsel to the New York City criminal justice coordinator, a role in which she helped develop and implement criminal justice initiatives and legislation in areas including human trafficking, sexual assault, family violence, firearms, identity theft, indigent defense, and justice system improvements.
She previously served as an assistant New York state attorney general and a staff attorney law clerk for the 2nd U. Circuit Court of Appeals. His work has focused on public security. He has conducted research on arms trafficking, organized crime and violence, firearm regulations in the United States, and the illegal flow of weapons into Mexico. He has a Ph. Prior to joining the Center, she served in the Obama administration in the U. Agency for International Development. Bhatia previously served as the inaugural Hillary R.
The authors wish to thank Mark D. Jones and Michelle Vanneman for technical assistance and support for this report. Arkadi Gerney , Chelsea Parsons. In this article. InProgress Stay updated on our work on the most pressing issues of our time. Overview of the U. Gun manufacturing The United States has been home to a robust firearms industry for decades. Gun imports While the majority of new guns available for sale in the United States are manufactured domestically, a significant number of guns are imported into the country every year as well.
Gaps in gun industry oversight The current approach to regulatory oversight of nearly every aspect of the gun industry is deeply flawed. ATF resource limitations The authority and obligation to enforce federal laws and regulations pertaining to the gun industry is vested in ATF. Restrictive budget riders In addition to restrictive language in the U. Heightened regulation of certain types of firearms and accessories. Ghost guns Under current federal law, gun manufacturers and importers are required to engrave a serial number on the frame or receiver of each firearm and gun dealers are required to conduct a background check before selling any firearm.
Policy recommendations to better regulate the gun industry. Increase oversight of gun manufacturers, importers, exporters, and dealers The laws, regulations, and systems in place for providing regulatory oversight of the gun industry have failed to keep pace with the exponential growth of this industry over the past few decades.
Improve data collection and reporting The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives publishes an annual report that offers only the most basic information on firearm commerce in this country. A more robust annual firearms commerce report should include the following: An analysis of how many assault-style firearms are manufactured, imported, and exported each year. Better data on the number of licensed manufacturers who maintain a license but do not manufacture any firearms during a specified year.
To incentivize full compliance with manufacturing reporting requirements, ATF should condition the renewal of a license on the submission of these reports. Data on ammunition production in the United States, broken down by caliber and type of cartridge.
Data on the number of licensee inspections broken down by type of license, state of business location, type of violations found, and penalties issued. This restriction needlessly complicates the crime gun tracing process, wasting scarce agency resources and slowing down the time it takes to complete traces.
The ban on requiring gun dealers to conduct an annual inventory reconciliation to look for missing guns. Instituting a mandatory FFL-conducted annual check of inventory would help quickly identify the thousands of firearms that are discovered lost or stolen from gun dealer inventory during compliance inspections every year, as well as help recover valuable IOI resources currently devoted to ATF-led inventory reconciliations.
Allowing licensees to maintain their license even when they are no longer operating a viable business overcrowds the license population and unnecessarily increases the workload of ATF inspectors and administrative personnel.
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