Opinion | A Smarter Way to Reduce Gun Deaths

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : To keep ineligible people from buying firearms, we need universal background checks.
47% : (That said, it is a problem when the Supreme Court encourages gun proliferation and when some states now issue permits to almost everyone, but the court still allows some room for regulation.)
44% : In any case, even if it were possible to get a new assault weapon ban through the Senate, the ban wouldn't affect the possibly 20 million or more such rifles already in circulation.
40% : The last assault weapon ban, from 1994 to 2004, didn't slow the sale of such weapons (because of bad definitions) and may have been counterproductive by turning them in some circles into icons of American manhood.
39% : The liberal impulse has sometimes also been to delegitimize all policing because of a history of racism and abuses; in fact, law enforcement contains multitudes, and some police strategies such as focused deterrence, targeting those most likely to use illegal guns, have reduced violence.

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