A new poll from Suffolk University and USA Today finds the majority of Americans do not want to debate gun control in the 2016 presidential election. According to the poll of 1,000 adults, 52 percent say they would not like gun control to be a “significant subject” during the election, with 43 percent saying they would.
“There is more desire to tighten than to loosen [gun laws],” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston, in a statement accompanying the release of the poll.
But that’s not reflected in the poll results, which did not ask if gun control laws should be tightened or loosened. The poll found 56 percent said more restrictive gun laws would not prevent mass shootings in the U.S., while 76 percent said more access to guns would also not prevent mass shootings in the U.S., the findings don’t necessarily mean there is “more desire to tighten” gun laws.
The poll was conducted just days after the mass shooting by a 21-year-old white man in a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina that killed nine people. A plurality of those surveyed, 47 percent, said they believed the shooting was an isolated incident, while 38 percent said it reflected a “larger problem of racism” in the country. Nearly 59 percent said the shooting should not be characterized and treated as a terrorist attack, while 31 percent say it should.
Read the full results of the poll here.
