A majority of Americans oppose adopting a national sales ban on “assault weapons,” according to a recent poll.
Of 1,003 adults, 51% said they opposed a ban, a 10-point increase from 2019, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday. Support for an assault weapons ban steadily declined from 2019, to 47% in 2023, as the public is undecided on whether or not making it harder to get guns would reduce mass shootings, according to the poll.
Following multiple deadly mass shootings in January, Democratic lawmakers began pushing for restrictive gun laws. Despite their call for national background checks and assault weapon bans, the poll shows one of the lowest measures of public support for a ban since the poll began in 1995. (RELATED: ‘Just Sick’: Biden Calls For Ban On Semi-Automatic Weapons)
The poll was released ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union Address, where he will likely reiterate support for a nation-wide assault rifle ban. In January, Biden pledged to continue his goal of banning “assault weapons,” saying that there is no “social redeeming value” to owning “assault weapons” because deer do not wear “Kevlar vests,” according to the president’s remarks at the National Action Network’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast.
Biden further questioned why Americans need so many bullets, saying “ban the number of bullets that can go in a magazine. No, no need for any of that.”
TRIGGER WARNING. New ABC News/WaPo poll shows support for banning “assault weapons” at all-time low, even in wake of multiple mass shootings.
Too late to leverage this crisis for more Bloomberg support.https://t.co/dD9hqu3jHq#copolitics #coleg #9News #HeyNext pic.twitter.com/S6fzWkPfsH
— 9mm News (@News9mm) February 7, 2023
Biden has repeatedly pushed to ban certain firearms; following the Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, mass shootings, Biden rolled out an extensive gun control agenda in June 2022, calling for a ban on “assault weapons and high capacity magazines.”
“They had one message for all of us: Do something, just do something, for God’s sake, do something,” Biden said while discussing the mass shootings. The president noted during his speech that the move to ban “assault weapons” and high capacity magazines “is not about taking away anyone’s guns.”
In November, Biden called for a ban on semi-automatic firearms, saying the ability to purchase these guns is “just sick.”
“It has no, no social redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers,” Biden said.
The poll, conducted from Jan. 27 to Feb. 1, has a margin of error of 3.5%.
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