Next Exit for Guns, Ammo, and Freedom: Public Opinion on Gun Policies and the Prevention of Mass Shootings in the United States

Violence Vict. 2025 Dec 9:VV-2024-0088.R1. doi: 10.1891/VV-2024-0088. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

The issue of mass shootings and how to prevent them has become a widely discussed topic in the United States, and attitudes about the role of guns in mass shootings are closely linked with gun policy preferences. An emerging frame to predict gun policy preferences is a “guns and freedom” ideology that views the wide availability of firearms as essential for freedom from criminal perpetrators and government authority. We rely on survey data to test the ability of the guns and freedom ideology to better predict the perspective that more guns in the hands of citizens would reduce mass shootings than frames typically discussed in the literature: political beliefs, region-rurality, gender-race, and gun ownership. Our results indicate that the belief that guns are essential to freedom is the strongest predictor of viewing the wide availability of guns as a solution for reducing mass shootings.

PMID:41371710 | DOI:10.1891/VV-2024-0088