The majority of American voters reported owning a firearm for the first time in polling history. In November, NBC News commissioned Public Opinion Strategies and Hart Research, a polling organization founded by Democrats, to produce the survey.
Using data from prior surveys by NBC News and its partners (including The Wall Street Journal), the article found that 42% of respondents gave a positive response to the question about guns in both the 2004 and 2013 surveys. The percentage then rose to 52% in August of this year.
Some have speculated about the reasons for the survey’s finding that more Democrats now say at least one member of their family has a gun.
New Report Addresses Democrat’s Growing Embrace of Firearms
Newsweek released an article on the importance of the NBC News poll’s results for Democrats on December 11. Below is a list showing the huge change in the number of registered Democratic voters who confirmed that a “gun of any kind” was owned by someone in the household during the last several years. There was an eight-point increase in the overall percentage of Democrats who reported having firearms in the home.
- March 2004: 33% of Democrats surveyed reported having a firearm.
- February 2013: 30% replied in the affirmative.
- August 2019: 33%.
- November 2023: 41%.
Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, discussed the results of the survey with Newsweek. Notable emeritus professor and David J. Bordua scholar verified that, with one exception, the findings were in line with earlier surveys.
Kleck said that prior research didn’t only look at registered voters, but the “entire adult population” of the nation. According to him, registered voters have a higher percentage of households with guns. In other words, the earlier figures cited in the NBC News poll would have shown a higher percentage of participants answering the question in the affirmative.
Kleck next turned his attention to Democrats, suggesting that the higher crime rates in big cities, where liberal voters “claim a larger share of the population,” may be related to the increasing number of households possessing weapons within that demographic group.
Republican Voters Reporting Guns in Their Households on the Rise
As you can see from the following list, the recent NBC News poll also found that more Republicans reported having a gun in the house. Among GOP voters, the overall rise was nine percent.
- March 2004: 57%
- February 2013: 55%
- August 2019: 64%
- November 2023: 66%
Over the past four years, the percentage of independents who reported having a firearm in their home has stayed largely unchanged when compared to Republicans and Democrats.
- March 2004: 41%
- February 2013: 49%
- August 2019: 46%
- November 2023: 45%
The survey was administered by pollsters from November 10th to the 14th. The majority of the thousand registered voters who took part in the survey did so using their mobile phones. An error margin of +/- 3.1 percentage points was included in the survey.
