On Gun Control Measures, There's Not As Much Agreement As Some Would Like To Think

The new Pew survey on gun owners contains a very interesting section on how gun owners and nonowners agree and disagree about laws which define how we buy and use guns. And the different opinions of the two groups in this respect is very important because, when all is said and done, the issue of how much to regulate guns is where the two sides basically divide.

When the survey was first published, many of the gun violence prevention (GVP) groups were pleased to discover that a majority of gun owners supported preventing guns from getting into the hands of the mentally ill, mandating background checks on all gun show sales, and restricting sales to individuals on the no-fly list. While support for all three policies also gained overwhelming buy-in from the non-gun side, the gap between the two sides was, at best, only a couple of points, with the overall positives averaging 86 percent for non-owners and averaging 82 percent for the folks who owned guns. In other words, for certain policies to curb gun violence, both sides basically agree.