ABSTRACT
Public opinion polls are an important part of the political process and combatants on both sides of the gun control debate use poll results to buttress their positions and persuade policymakers of the popularity of the positions they take. Public opinion seems particularly prone to large short-term changes in response to highly publicized acts of gun violence, with support increasing sharply immediately after the event and then dropping as memory of the event fades. Consistent with the idea that opinion on gun control has low salience for most Americans, opinion on some specific measures seems highly volatile, with substantial short-term shifts in levels of support despite that absence of any long-term trend. The simplest way to tie together the available evidence is to conclude that most Americans, despite their willingness to provide nonmissing answers to survey opinion questions, have little or no opinion on specific gun control proposals.
