States continued to diverge on gun policy this year, with especially intense debate in the swing states that will decide November’s election. In Michigan, legislators are considering at least half a dozen gun bills that would create storage requirements and establish gun-free zones, Stateline reports. In Pennsylvania, lawmakers are debating measures that would ban sales of untraceable guns and gun parts, prohibit bump stocks and make some procedural changes related to gun purchases. Meanwhile, Republican legislators in Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina have sought to make it easier for people to procure guns and to carry them in more places This past week offered reminders of the continuing salience of guns. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 2018 rule — issued by the Trump administration — that banned bump stocks, attachments that transform semiautomatic rifles into weapons that can shoot hundreds of rounds per minute. “If there are any particularly horrendous shootings in the months to come, that has a way of pushing the issue back to the forefront of the agenda,” said Robert Spitzer, a gun policy expert who has written six books and over 100 articles on gun policy.
Meanwhile, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and GOP candidates nationwide have made crime and public disorder main themes of their campaigns, even though most crime measurements are trending downward. Gun policy has been a topic of debate for decades, but has become especially prominent as the number of gun-related deaths and mass shootings has grown almost every year since 2014, according to the Gun Violence Archive. A Gallup poll in October 2023 found that the majority of U.S. adults, or 56%, support stricter gun laws, while 31% think they should remain as they are and 12% prefer less strict laws. A Pew Research Center survey from June 2023 found that 60% of U.S. adults say gun violence is a major problem. Other states — including Colorado, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oregon, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia — also considered gun-related legislation this year.
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