Reply #131: Most Americans, including gun owners agree

[safeinOhio]

that more needs to be done. They seem to think that mandatory registration of handguns and pistols is a good idea by 82% and that number includes gun owners. While you say change nothing, the majority of people in this country disagree.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/339/12/813

There was strong support for policies prohibiting persons convicted of specific misdemeanors from purchasing a firearm. Support for such prohibitions was strongest for crimes involving violence or the illegal use of a firearm (83 to 95 percent) or substance abuse (71 to 92 percent). There was also widespread support for policies designed to reduce the illegal sale of guns, such as mandatory tamper-resistant serial numbers (90 percent), a limit of one handgun purchase per customer per month (81 percent), and mandatory registration of handguns (82 percent). Even among the subgroup of respondents who were gun owners, a majority were in favor of stricter gun regulations with regard to 20 of the 22 proposals covered in the poll.
Conclusions Strong public support, even among gun owners, for innovative strategies to regulate firearms suggests that these proposals warrant serious consideration by policy makers.

Eighty-one percent of all respondents favored limiting handgun purchases to no more than one per customer per month. Eighty-two percent favored mandatory registration of handguns and pistols, and 63 percent favored mandatory registration of rifles and shotguns. Seventy percent preferred that licenses to sell guns be given only to operators of gun stores and not to persons who want to sell guns from their homes. When asked whether they would favor or oppose a law requiring that private gun sales be subject to the same background check as sales by licensed dealers, 77 percent of the respondents favored such a law. Eighty-three percent agreed that the arrest of illegal gun traffickers should be one of the highest priorities of the police and, despite the perceived importance of the arrest of drug dealers, 30 percent said that it was more important for the police to crack down on illegal gun sales than to crack down on illegal drug sales. Respondents were told that serial numbers on handguns, which permit gun tracing, could be made harder to remove, and that this could increase the price of the handgun slightly. Still, 90 percent favored a law requiring handgun manufacturers to make serial numbers tamper-resistant.