After the shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia last fall, Democrat lawmakers were quick to demand new gun control laws be put in place.
Now, a new survey from the Atlanta Journal Constitution shows that most voters are rejecting the anti-gun calls to action... much like they rejected Democratic lawmakers in last November's elections.
A new AJC poll out this morning shows 51% of Georgia voters are “somewhat” or “very” worried that either they or someone in their family would be a victim in a mass shooting.
But while most Georgians (55%) say they think stricter gun laws would reduce mass shootings, only 28% said lawmakers should pass them. Instead, 58% say they want lawmakers to spend more money on school resource officers and metal detectors.
The poll, which surveyed 1,000 registered voters and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, highlights the complex and sometimes contradictory feelings of voters. For example, a majority of voters said they believe transgender people are discriminated against, but they also support laws directing which bathrooms they can use and what sports teams they can play on, the AJC’s Maya T. Prabhu and Michelle Baruchman report.
What's really interesting here is that survey respondents were also given the choice of backing both additional gun control laws and spending more money on things like SROs and metal detectors, but that third option only received the support of 8.7% of respondents. A clear and substantial majority of Georgians have rejected the idea of putting more gun laws on the books, including 71% of respondents between the ages of 18-29.
In fact, though the AJC poll specifically referenced taking steps to stop school shootings (not mass shootings more generally), the youngest cohort of respondents was the least supportive of additional gun laws. Just 21% of 18-29-year-olds backed more gun laws, compared to roughly 30% of voters 30 and older.
It's also worth noting that while the AJC claims that 55% of respondents believe stricter gun laws would reduce mass shootings, only 17% were very confident in their opinion. 41% of respondents, on the other hand, were very confident that more gun laws would not reduce mass shootings. The AJC had to add in the 26.8% of respondents who were "somewhat confident" that more gun laws would reduce mass shootings to find majority support for that proposition.
Not surprisingly, the vast majority of Kamala Harris voters said that they were either very confident (31%) or somewhat confident (40.6%) that more gun laws would reduce mass shootings, while most Donald Trump voters were very confident that more gun control laws won't help. A whopping 70.9% of Trump voters vehemently disagreed with the need for more gun control laws, while another 11.3% were somewhat confident that more laws won't make a difference.
Democrats at the statehouse in Atlanta have already introduced a number of anti-2A bills this session, but there's little chance of them being enacted into law. Legislation holding gun owners culpable (at least to some degree) for the criminal acts of juveniles who get ahold of their firearm may get the backing of some Republicans, but it's pretty clear that most Georgians would prefer to see laws targeting violent offenders instead of lawful gun owners, and that's a very good thing.
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