Deploying Public Opinion to Make Progress on Gun Safety Event Summary

Over the last three decades, countless mass shootings have plagued American cities and towns, each one spurring loud and vicious fights between policymakers who want to pass new laws to protect our communities from gun violence and those who believe any policy changes would erode the Constitutional right to bear arms. But those polarized debates have obscured the fact that most Americans, regardless of political ideology, want commonsense gun safety reforms. Third Way got to the bottom of these views in its gun reform polling research and further discussed the broad support for gun reform during this event.

Lanae Erickson, Senior Vice President of Social Policy, Education, and Politics at Third Way, moderated a panel featuring Republican pollster Robert Jones (GS Strategy Group) and Democratic pollster Angela Kuefler (Global Strategy Group) that discussed how American voters approach gun reform issues. The event explored how a shift in the public’s view on gun reform paved the way for a bipartisan deal on guns as well as how public opinion might prime policymakers to build on that law with further progress.