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Survey: Pandemic First-Time Buyers Younger and More Diverse, Oppose Gun Control

04/06/2022 10:00 AM | Anonymous
  • Survey: Pandemic First-Time Buyers Younger and More Diverse, Oppose Gun Control  Jake Fogleman, March 28, 2022; Adapted and edited by Lee Edgcomb

    People who purchased a gun for the first time during the pandemic may not look like previous gun owners, but they overwhelmingly share the same opinions on gun laws. Those were the findings of a new survey released Thursday from National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (NORC):

  • 86 percent of first-time buyers identified in the survey were under 45, compared to 41 percent for pre-pandemic owners.
  • 5 percent of all adults in America purchased a gun for the first time during the two-year period between March 2020 and March 2022.
  • 46 percent of American households now report having a gun in the home.

Increasing, gun sales during the pandemic were driven in nearly equal parts by people purchasing a gun for the first time and existing gun owners purchasing additional firearms,” John Roman, NORC Senior Fellow, said in a press release. “New gun owners during the pandemic were much more likely to be younger and People of Color compared to pre-pandemic gun owners in America.” The data provides more support for the observation that the landscape of American gun ownership has shifted massively in just the last two years.

Attitudes toward gun control among new owners largely mirror those of existing gun owners. Equal shares of first-time and existing gun owners (68 percent) support allowing people to carry concealed firearms into more places. Likewise, 41 percent of both first-time and existing gun owners said they supported allowing them to do so without a permit. “First-time gun buyers’ attitudes toward gun control look remarkably similar to those of the pre-pandemic U.S. gun owner,” Roman said. “Whether they bought a gun because of existing beliefs about gun control—or owning a gun changed their policy views—is unknown, but it is notable that the policy positions of new gun owners are so different from non-gun owners.”

The survey was conducted March 3–7, 2022 among 1,106 adults aged 18 and up. It has a margin of error of +/- 3.85 percent.

SCOPE note from NORC’s web page:

NORC at the University of Chicago conducts research and analysis that decision-makers trust. As a nonpartisan research organization and a pioneer in measuring and understanding the world, we have studied almost every aspect of the human experience and every major news event for more than eight decades. Today, we partner with government, corporate, and nonprofit clients around the world to provide the objectivity and expertise necessary to inform the critical decisions facing society.

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