More than half of Americans want stricter gun laws: poll

A poll conducted between the mass shootings that took place this month in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas, found that over half of Americans supported making gun violence laws more strict. 

Fifty-four percent of Americans surveyed in a CBS News-YouGov poll out Wednesday said they would like to see stricter laws regulating the sale of guns. Another 30 percent said they wanted gun laws to remain the same, and 16 percent said they wanted gun laws to be less strict. 

The poll showed that beliefs regarding such laws differed across party affiliation, with 79 percent of Democrats surveyed favoring stricter gun sale laws, compared to 27 percent of Republicans and 50 percent of independents. 

Meanwhile 9 percent of Democrats pooled, 24 percent of Republicans and 17 percent of independents said they wanted less strict gun sale laws.

The largest portion of Republicans polled, 49 percent, said they wanted gun sale laws to remain the same, along with 33 percent of independents and 12 percent of Democrats, according to the poll. 

The survey was conducted between May 18 and May 20 and included a sample of 2,041 U.S. adults. It has a margin of error of 2.5 percentage points. 

The interviews with respondents occurred just days before Tuesday’s brutal shooting in Texas left 19 elementary school students and two teachers dead. 

Since the attack, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) has begun the process of getting two bills that would expand and strengthen background check requirements for gun sales on the Senate’s legislative calendar

Both bills passed the House last year. Gun control measures face an uphill battle in the evenly split Senate, however. Most legislation requires 60 votes in the upper chamber to overcome a filibuster, and Republicans have not shown support for implementing new limits on the sale or ownership of firearms.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has also said that one of the bills passed by the House, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021 or H.R. 8, is too far-reaching.

Manchin has instead pushed for a narrower plan that exempts transfers and sales between family and friends, a proposal he negotiated with input from the National Rifle Association (NRA) in 2013.