NEW YORK (AP) — Wherever you look in this nation born of a bloody revolution of musket fire, chances are there’s sharp disagreement over firearms.
Democrats war with Republicans, and small towns are against cities. Women and men are at odds, as are blacks and whites and old and young. North clashes with South, East with West.
“The current gun debate is more polarized and sour than any time before in American history,” said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor at UCLA and author of the 2011 book, “Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”
In the midst of debate over the latest mass shooting, in Orlando, it’s easy to imagine that guns have always divided us this way. But a close look at survey data over decades shows they haven’t.
There was a time, not that long ago, when most citizens favored banning handguns, the chief gun lobbyists supported firearm restrictions, and courts hadn’t yet interpreted the Second Amendment as guaranteeing a personal right to bear arms for self-defense at home.
Today, in a country of hundreds of millions of guns, public opinion and interpretation of the law have shifted so much that outright gun bans are unthinkable. It’s true that large segments of the public have expressed support for some aspects of gun regulation — but when Americans have been asked to say which is more important, gun control or gun rights, they trend toward the latter.
That shift has come, perhaps surprisingly, as fewer Americans today choose to keep a gun in their home. The General Social Survey, a massive study undertaken by NORC at the University of Chicago since 1972 and one of the foremost authorities on gun ownership, found 31 percent of households had guns in 2014. That was down from a high of 50.4 percent in 1977.
“Institutions have repeated, ‘More guns, less crime. More guns, less crime,’ over and over again for almost 40 years, and it’s hard to turn that belief around in any easy way,” said Joan Burbick, an emeritus professor at Washington State University who wrote “Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy” and who owns a gun for hobby shooting.
Among the longest-existing measures of public gun sentiment is a Gallup poll question asking whether there should be a law banning handguns except by police and other authorized people. When it was first asked, in July 1959, 60 percent of respondents approved of such a measure.
By last October, only 27 percent agreed.
Many point to a single date as crucial in the societal shift: May 21, 1977, when the National Rifle Association held its annual meeting at a convention hall in Cincinnati.
“That was the moment, in one evening, when the gun debate in America radically changed,” said Winkler.
The turmoil of the country in the 1960s and 1970s roiled institutions of all kinds, the NRA included. The organization had fought gun laws in the past, but also had come to accept some, including the Gun Control Act of 1968. As the next decade wore on and the NRA entered its second century, it faced an identity crisis: Was it a coalition of sportsmen, or a political powerhouse?
Leaders were set on the former, drawing up plans to move its headquarters from Washington to Colorado and to retreat from politics. Some of its most fiery members disagreed, staging a revolt that night that stretched into the next morning, and remade the group’s leadership. Plans for a westward move were scuttled, and a rightward move politically was sealed.
The gun lobby’s increasingly powerful voice found receptive ears among a public that witnessed the country’s civil rights battles, assassinations of beloved leaders and growing lawlessness in cities. Over time, statehouses and Congress bowed to the influence of the NRA and its allies. And in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared Americans have the right to a gun for self-defense.
“What they (gun rights advocates) did is a classic example of how you make constitutional change: They realized they needed to win in the court of public opinion before you could win in the court of law,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and author of “The Second Amendment: A Biography.”
Pew Research Center data provides a sketch of what the gun-owning populace looks like today:
•74 percent of gun owners are men and 82 percent are white.
•Those in rural areas are more than twice as likely as urbanites to own a gun.
•Ownership rates in the Northeast are lower than in the rest of the country.
•Gun owners are far more likely to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.
Data from GSS shows gun owners are more likely to have higher incomes — and to vote.
Taken together, this is a description of a motivated and politically potent group. But their clout sometimes obscures a simple fact: Though polarization appears in broad questions on gun rights, far more consensus emerges on individual proposals.
A Pew poll released in August showed 85 percent of people support background checks for purchases at gun shows and in private sales; 79 percent support laws to prevent the mentally ill from buying guns; 70 percent approve of a federal database to track gun sales; and 57 percent favor a ban on assault weapons.
“The fact is it’s not divisive. The things that we’re advocating in the American public, when you’re talking about keeping guns out of dangerous hands, we all agree. We all agree on the solutions,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, and whose brother was severely hurt in a shooting. “The only place where this is truly a controversial issue is, tragically and disgracefully, in Congress and in our statehouses across the country.”
In the wake of the Orlando shooting that claimed 49 lives, Democrats mounted a 15-hour filibuster in the U.S. Senate to try to break a stalemate on a gun bill — just as attempts to revive legislation have followed other recent mass shootings, though with little effect. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, a moderate Republican, likened it to “Groundhog Day,” while Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat from Florida, said he couldn’t see how even the NRA could object to a bill such as the one being considered, to keep those on a terrorist watch list from purchasing guns.
There is little expectation that the Democratic bill will pass. “They are accustomed to getting their way around here,” Nelson said of the NRA.
The NRA did not respond to an interview request.
Gross sees signs for hope for gun control supporters. Social media, he said, has helped get out a message that his side, for years, struggled to spread against the deep pockets of the gun lobby. The Democratic presidential primary, in which Hillary Clinton made gun control a flagship issue in differentiating herself from Bernie Sanders, showed it’s not an untouchable political issue. And changing national demographics could further bolster the case of those who favor gun restrictions, because minorities are comprising a larger share of the populace and are less likely to own guns.
Still, this debate remains one of the most toxic in America.
Winkler, the UCLA professor, knows divisiveness. He worked on the defense teams of O.J. Simpson and Michael Jackson. His research has prompted impassioned debates on issues from free speech to campaign finance.
“Nothing has ever come close to the level of vitriol I have seen with guns,” he said. “Both sides feel that life and death is at stake.”
The fear expressed by many gun owners that the government seeks to confiscate their weapons harkens back to the time of the Constitution’s framers. When James Madison first proposed the right to bear arms, Waldman said, it was specifically seen as a right for gun ownership in the service of militias, which were seen as a bulwark against the possible tyranny and risk of overreach from a central government. That rationale for gun ownership still exists among many today.
“People were worrying about overreach from Washington when it was George Washington and not Washington, D.C.,” Waldman said.
31 percent of households had guns in 2014, down from a high of 50.4 percent in 1977.
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31 percent of households had guns in 2014, down from a high of 50.4 percent in 1977.
FILE – In this Saturday, April 19, 2014 file photo, Lina Chesley, 4, holds a U.S. flag as she and her father, Jotham Chesley, carry their weapons during a gun-rights rally to celebrate Patriots’ Day at the steps of the Utah capital in Salt Lake City. The rally focused on supporting the Second Amendment right to own firearms. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
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FILE – In this Saturday, April 19, 2014 file photo, Lina Chesley, 4, holds a U.S. flag as she and her father, Jotham Chesley, carry their weapons during a gun-rights rally to celebrate Patriots’ Day at the steps of the Utah capital in Salt Lake City. The rally focused on supporting the Second Amendment right to own firearms. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
FILE – In this Sunday, June 12, 2016 file photo, a police officer stands guard outside the Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital after the mass shooting at the nearby Pulse Orlando nightclub in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
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FILE – In this Sunday, June 12, 2016 file photo, a police officer stands guard outside the Orlando Regional Medical Center hospital after the mass shooting at the nearby Pulse Orlando nightclub in Orlando, Fla. (AP Photo/Phelan M. Ebenhack)
FILE – In this June 10, 1963 file photo, Lt. W.B. Painter, a state investigator, photographs a cache of pistols, dynamite, pocket tear gas guns, and other weapons confiscated in Tuscaloosa, Ala., a day before the integration of the University of Alabama. (AP Photo)
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FILE – In this June 10, 1963 file photo, Lt. W.B. Painter, a state investigator, photographs a cache of pistols, dynamite, pocket tear gas guns, and other weapons confiscated in Tuscaloosa, Ala., a day before the integration of the University of Alabama. (AP Photo)
FILE – In this Tuesday, June 11, 1996 file photo, Black Panthers member Najee Mtume carries his rifle as he tours the New Light House of Prayer Church in Greenville, Texas. Officials have said the African American church that burned Sunday evening was set by an arsonist. (AP Photo/Ron Heflin)
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FILE – In this Tuesday, June 11, 1996 file photo, Black Panthers member Najee Mtume carries his rifle as he tours the New Light House of Prayer Church in Greenville, Texas. Officials have said the African American church that burned Sunday evening was set by an arsonist. (AP Photo/Ron Heflin)
FILE – In this Nov. 8, 1997 file photo, Chris Cooper, right, and his friends walk through a Conservation Reserve Program field at dawn on the opening day of pheasant hunting season near Buhler, Kansas. The group said they shared the morning together for the ninth year in a row. (Melissa Lacey/The Hutchinson News via AP)
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FILE – In this Nov. 8, 1997 file photo, Chris Cooper, right, and his friends walk through a Conservation Reserve Program field at dawn on the opening day of pheasant hunting season near Buhler, Kansas. The group said they shared the morning together for the ninth year in a row. (Melissa Lacey/The Hutchinson News via AP)
FILE – In this Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013 file photo, a tear runs down the cheek of Katie Bottoms of Pittsburgh who lost two sons to gun violence, during a CeaseFirePa rally in the Pennsylvania Capital building in Harrisburg, Pa. As a boycott continued to grow over a ban on assault weapons at next month’s Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, gun rights supporters and gun control supporters held rallies at the state Capitol. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
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FILE – In this Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013 file photo, a tear runs down the cheek of Katie Bottoms of Pittsburgh who lost two sons to gun violence, during a CeaseFirePa rally in the Pennsylvania Capital building in Harrisburg, Pa. As a boycott continued to grow over a ban on assault weapons at next month’s Eastern Sports and Outdoor Show in Harrisburg, gun rights supporters and gun control supporters held rallies at the state Capitol. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
FILE – In this Jan. 9, 1959 file photo, Jim Bell, 17, the fastest draw in the Frontier Quick Draw Club, demonstrates his speed against a "bad man" target in Chicago, Ill. Jim can draw in 19/100ths of a second. The gun slingers use wax bullets which they make themselves. Live ammunition is forbidden. (AP Photo/Edward Kitch)
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FILE – In this Jan. 9, 1959 file photo, Jim Bell, 17, the fastest draw in the Frontier Quick Draw Club, demonstrates his speed against a "bad man" target in Chicago, Ill. Jim can draw in 19/100ths of a second. The gun slingers use wax bullets which they make themselves. Live ammunition is forbidden. (AP Photo/Edward Kitch)
FILE – In this Nov. 4, 2012, file photo, Jimmie Johnson fires blanks from a pair of revolver pistols as he celebrates his win in Victory Lane following the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at the Texas Motor Speedway, in Fort Worth, Texas. The National Rifle Association became the title sponsor of the April 13, 2013 Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. (AP Photo/Tim Sharp, File)
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FILE – In this Nov. 4, 2012, file photo, Jimmie Johnson fires blanks from a pair of revolver pistols as he celebrates his win in Victory Lane following the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series auto race at the Texas Motor Speedway, in Fort Worth, Texas. The National Rifle Association became the title sponsor of the April 13, 2013 Sprint Cup race at Texas Motor Speedway in Fort Worth. (AP Photo/Tim Sharp, File)
FILE – In this Monday, Sept. 14, 2009 file photo, members of the "End Zone Militia" watch fighter jets flyover Gillette Stadium before a New England Patriots NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills in Foxborough, Mass. Michael Waldman, author of "The Second Amendment: A Biography," says when James Madison first proposed the right to bear arms, it was specifically seen as a right for gun ownership in the service of militias, which were seen as a bulwark against the possible tyranny and risk of overreach from a central government. That rationale for gun ownership still exists among many today. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)
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FILE – In this Monday, Sept. 14, 2009 file photo, members of the "End Zone Militia" watch fighter jets flyover Gillette Stadium before a New England Patriots NFL football game against the Buffalo Bills in Foxborough, Mass. Michael Waldman, author of "The Second Amendment: A Biography," says when James Madison first proposed the right to bear arms, it was specifically seen as a right for gun ownership in the service of militias, which were seen as a bulwark against the possible tyranny and risk of overreach from a central government. That rationale for gun ownership still exists among many today. (AP Photo/Winslow Townson)
FILE – In this Thursday, Dec. 25, 2003 file photo, Dan Kinnamon, dressed as a Revolutionary War Third Pennsylvania Regiment private, stands on a boat used in the annual re-enactment of George Washington’s Christmas crossing in 1776, at Washington Crossing, Pa., next to the Delaware River. New Jersey is in the background. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)
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FILE – In this Thursday, Dec. 25, 2003 file photo, Dan Kinnamon, dressed as a Revolutionary War Third Pennsylvania Regiment private, stands on a boat used in the annual re-enactment of George Washington’s Christmas crossing in 1776, at Washington Crossing, Pa., next to the Delaware River. New Jersey is in the background. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)
FILE – In this Monday, Oct. 21, 2002 file photo, National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston holds up a rifle as he addresses gun owners during a "get-out-the-vote" rally in Manchester, N.H. In May 1977, as the NRA entered its second century, it faced an identity crisis: Was it a coalition of sportsmen, or a political powerhouse? Leaders were set on the former, drawing up plans to move its headquarters from Washington to Colorado and to retreat from politics. Some of its most fiery members disagreed, staging a revolt that night that stretched into the next morning, and remade the group’s leadership. Plans for a westward move were scuttled, and a rightward move politically was sealed. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
http://limaohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_AP16171050693874.jpg
FILE – In this Monday, Oct. 21, 2002 file photo, National Rifle Association President Charlton Heston holds up a rifle as he addresses gun owners during a "get-out-the-vote" rally in Manchester, N.H. In May 1977, as the NRA entered its second century, it faced an identity crisis: Was it a coalition of sportsmen, or a political powerhouse? Leaders were set on the former, drawing up plans to move its headquarters from Washington to Colorado and to retreat from politics. Some of its most fiery members disagreed, staging a revolt that night that stretched into the next morning, and remade the group’s leadership. Plans for a westward move were scuttled, and a rightward move politically was sealed. (AP Photo/Jim Cole)
FILE – In this July 28, 1942 file photo, two members of the Maryland Minute Men, a civilian defense organization, hold their rifles as they lie low in a southern Maryland hay field during a search for traces of parachutists during World War II. State and federal agencies joined in hunt in Crownsville, Md. (AP Photo)
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FILE – In this July 28, 1942 file photo, two members of the Maryland Minute Men, a civilian defense organization, hold their rifles as they lie low in a southern Maryland hay field during a search for traces of parachutists during World War II. State and federal agencies joined in hunt in Crownsville, Md. (AP Photo)
FILE – In this Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008 file photo, Delta Theta Sigma fraternity brothers hunt for deer together on Penn State University farm land in State College, Pa. The Delta Theta Sigma fraternity is geared toward students interested in agriculture careers, many of them avid hunters from growing up in small towns and rural areas. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
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FILE – In this Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2008 file photo, Delta Theta Sigma fraternity brothers hunt for deer together on Penn State University farm land in State College, Pa. The Delta Theta Sigma fraternity is geared toward students interested in agriculture careers, many of them avid hunters from growing up in small towns and rural areas. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
FILE – This Oct. 12, 1964 file photo shows an 18th Century flint lock pocket pistol, from the Revolutionary War era, on display in a rare gun collection at the Abercrombie & Fitch department store in New York. The handle of the weapon is inlaid with silver wire. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff)
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FILE – This Oct. 12, 1964 file photo shows an 18th Century flint lock pocket pistol, from the Revolutionary War era, on display in a rare gun collection at the Abercrombie & Fitch department store in New York. The handle of the weapon is inlaid with silver wire. (AP Photo/Dave Pickoff)
In this April 19, 2015, file photo, Clinton Sabers, 15, of Galena, Ill., and others shoot at targets during the Project Appleseed Rifle Marksmanship Clinic at the Izaak Walton Gun Club in Peosta, Iowa. The clinic was conducted by the Revolutionary War Veterans Association.
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In this April 19, 2015, file photo, Clinton Sabers, 15, of Galena, Ill., and others shoot at targets during the Project Appleseed Rifle Marksmanship Clinic at the Izaak Walton Gun Club in Peosta, Iowa. The clinic was conducted by the Revolutionary War Veterans Association.
Nicki Kohl | Telegraph Herald via AP
By Matt Sedensky, Associated Press
Gun ownership drops in US, but support for gun rights grows
By Larry Fenn and Angeliki Kastanis
Associated Press
A look at gun ownership and attitudes about gun control in the United States:
•Gun ownership has decreased among all age, race and gender groups since 1973. At its peak in that time frame, in 1977, 50.4 percent of households had guns. By 2014, just 31 percent of households did.
•The drop was most pronounced among younger Americans. Among 18- to 25-year-olds, the ownership rate fell from 45 percent to 13 percent.
•Black gun ownership has dropped 75 percent since 1973; white gun ownership has decreased 48 percent.
•In 2014, about one-fourth of whites, 26 percent, owned a gun. Among blacks, the rate was 10 percent.
•Gun owners are more likely to vote. In 2004, 31 percent of gun owners said they voted, versus 17 percent of those without guns. In 2008, 23 percent of gun owners reported voting, compared with 17 percent of non-gun owners. In 2012, it was 25 percent versus 19 percent.
•When asked which is more important, gun control or protecting gun rights, big gains have been recorded in those choosing gun rights, particularly in the past 15 years, leaving Americans nearly evenly split. Those favoring gun rights — 29 percent of the population in 2000 — grew to 47 percent by last year. Those saying gun control is more important declined from 57 percent to 50 percent in the same period.
•Though a big gap still exists between blacks and whites, both groups have moved to valuing gun rights over gun control. In 1999, 17 percent of blacks favored gun rights over gun control, compared with 34 percent in 2014. Whites went from 32 percent to 61 percent.
•Republicans have moved far more swiftly than Democrats toward favoring gun rights over gun control. In 1999, 42 percent of Republicans said gun rights were more important, versus 76 percent in 2014. Among Democrats, the increase was much smaller, from 19 percent to 28 percent.
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Source: Pew Research Center, General Social Survey by NORC at the University of Chicago
Associated Press data reporters Larry Fenn and Angeliki Kastanis contributed to this report.