A majority of Americans are happy or prospective gun owners who keep firearms around to protect themselves, Pew Research found in its latest poll.
The poll, which surveyed 5,115 U.S. adults in June, found that, contrary to Democrats’ anti-gun rhetoric, Americans across all demographics enjoy exercising their Second Amendment rights by personally owning guns or living with someone who does.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans either already live in a household with a gun or have expressed interest in buying a gun in the future. Considering the U.S. is experiencing the highest personal gun ownership uptick since 2011, even those who aren’t firearm owners yet could be soon.
When Pew measured Americans’ attitudes towards guns in 2017, only 67 percent of firearm owners said they had guns for protection. After years of soaring gun sales due to rising crime and the summer 2020 riots, 72 percent of American gun owners now say protection is the primary reason they keep firearms around.
Overall, 81 percent of gun owners say owning a firearm makes them feel safer. A majority of non-gun owners, 57 percent, say they also feel safer if someone in their household owns a gun.
“Gun owners express overwhelmingly positive sentiments about owning a gun, with sizable majorities saying it makes them feel safer and that they enjoy having a gun,” Pew noted.
Safety is likely one of the reasons gun ownership among women specifically has climbed in recent years. In 2017, only 22 percent of women said they personally owned a gun. Now, 25 percent of females have a firearm of their own.
Gun ownership, Pew found, is still higher among rural, Republican voters than among urbanites and Democrats. The latter groups, however, saw increases in gun ownership in the last five years. Between 2017 and now, firearm ownership among urban dwellers jumped 1 percent.
Approximately 4 percent more blue voters say they have guns now than they did in 2017. Six percent more Democrats have guns in their household in 2023 than they did in 2017.
Pew tried to overshadow their robust gun ownership report by highlighting that 61 percent of Americans think it is too easy to get a gun in the U.S. What the poll did not specify is exactly how law-abiding Americans feel about leftist-led legislation that seeks to restrict their Second Amendment rights.
Despite the fact that deadly mass shootings increased during Congress’ 1994 ban on “assault weapons,” Democrats, led by President Joe Biden, desperately want another ban on the most popular semi-automatic rifles on the market.
“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick,” Biden said in November 2022. “It has no socially redeeming value. Zero. None. Not a single solitary rationale for it except profit for the gun manufacturers.”
There are a myriad of problems with blue politicians’ unconstitutional gun-grab policies. One such problem is that if Democrats pass a federal ban on AR-15s, they would be depriving Americans of the ability to protect themselves in the they choose.