Polls: Americans want stricter gun controls, nearly half who own guns have them for self-protection

The latest Washington-Post/ABC poll on gun laws shows what polls have been showing for three months: A majority of Americans back stricter measures to control who can buy a gun and what kind, and they are close to evenly split on whom they trust more on gun control'President Barack Obama or Republicans. That's a bit contradictory since most congressional Republicans oppose passing any new gun-control laws and Obama has proposed several.

The Post/ABC poll also shows what previous ones have: 42 percent of Americans said they live in a household where there are firearms even though they may not personally own one. There's a strong gender and partisan difference on that: 48 percent of men live in a gun-owning household, while only 36 percent of women do; 62 percent of Republicans said they live in households that have guns, while only 26 percent of Democrats said so. That's a match for the most recent survey released by the Pew Research Center for People & the Press. In that poll, 31 percent of Republicans said they personally own a firearm; only 16 percent of Democrats said they do.

In reply to Pew's question, Why do you own a gun?, 48 percent of those surveyed said "protection," 32 percent "hunting," seven percent "target shooting." That is a huge shift from 1999 when the same question found only 26 percent owning guns for protection and 49 percent for hunting. Please continue reading below the fold to see the replies to other questions in the two polls.