Should You Sell Your Glock Stock?

After being stalled for many years, the Newtown, Connecticut school violence has apparently moved public opinion and cautious politicians to advocate more national (and local) gun restrictions. Although not uniformly. There are conservative parts of the country that believe the solution to acts of gun violence against civilians is a broader distribution of handguns and training.

The constitutional principle of the right to own firearms does not appear to have lost much support. Since about 2009, gun rights and gun control have been closely divided viewpoints among Americans. But a significant portion of the public appears to believes Newtown reflects something is seriously wrong, not just an isolated incident by a mentally ill individual. Hence, a political or legal response is called for. Previous mass shootings of Virginia Tech, Gabby Gifford and the Aurora Theaters failed to produce calls for change.

Gun ownership in a household is strongly associated with partisanship and where a person lives. Democrats’ challenge is that in rural areas, upwards of half of their partisans are gun households.

• Gun ownership has declined from about 50% of households to 35%.
• Most of that drop is among Democrats. Today, about 50% of Republicans own guns and 22% of Democrats.