Survey: Most voters prefer living around others with legal guns

Americans prefer to live in neighborhoods where they can legally own guns over those areas they can’t, according to the results of a new national poll released last week.

The study, conducted by Rasmussen Reports, found only 22 percent of likely U.S. voters polled over the phone said they felt safer in living in neighborhoods where no one owned guns over ones where residents were packing.

Some 68 percent of those 977 polled June 8-9 said they felt safer in those areas of lawful gun ownership and 10 percent were undecided on the issue.

According to Rasmussen, pollees were asked, “Would you feel safer moving to a neighborhood where nobody was allowed to own a gun or a neighborhood where you could have a gun for your own protection?”

Of those who said they’d feel safer in gun-free neighborhoods, 27 percent were city-dwelling voters, 24 percent lived in the suburbs and only 14 percent lived in rural areas.     

Voters under 40 were less likely than older folks to say they would feel safer in neighborhoods where they could legally own a gun. Black pollees were less likely to feel safe in legal gun neighborhoods than whites and other minority voters. According to the survey, Democrats were twice as likely as Republicans and other non-major party voters to say they would feel safer in non-gun owning neighborhoods.      

Not surprisingly, the majority of those voters who prefer a complete handgun ban said they would feel safer in gun-free neighborhoods. Those who oppose a handgun ban said they would prefer to live in a neighborhood where legally owning guns was allowed.