MONDAY, Jan. 28 (HealthDay News) -- A large majority of Americans, including members of the National Rifle Association, support a wide range of policies to reduce gun violence, according to a new survey.
The survey, from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, found that 89 percent of people support background checks for all gun sales, 69 percent support a ban on the sale of military-style semiautomatic assault weapons and 68 percent support a ban on the sale of large-capacity ammunition magazines.
The national poll was conducted in January, several weeks after the Dec. 14 school shootings in Newtown, Conn., that left 20 young children and six adult staffers dead.
The poll also found that most Americans support prohibiting high-risk people from owning guns, including those convicted of a serious crime as a juvenile (83 percent) and those convicted of violating a domestic violence restraining order (81 percent).
There was also strong backing for many measures to strengthen oversight of gun dealers and to restrict gun access by people with mental illness, the researchers said.
Overall, the more than 2,700 respondents supported all but four of the 31 gun policies asked about in the survey, which included gun owners and non-gun owners living in homes with guns.
"This research indicates high support among Americans, including gun owners in many cases, for a wide range of policies aimed at reducing gun violence," study lead author Colleen Barry, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, said in a school news release. "These data indicate broad consensus among the American public in support of a comprehensive approach to reducing the staggering toll of gun violence in the United States."
Study co-author Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, said: "Not only are gun owners and non-gun-owners very much aligned in t
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