According to a study released by the Pew Research Center, Latinos are more likely to favor strict gun control laws over Whites and African Americans.
The study found that only 29% of Latinos feel it is more important to protect gun ownership rightsthan it is to control the ownership of guns. This is different from how Whites responded to the survey, which found that 57% of them believe it is more important to protect gun ownership rights, while 37% place importance on gun ownership control.
Some believe that the increasing prevalence of gun violence in Latin America may be impacting the Latino support for stricter gun control laws in the United States.
The release of the Pew Research Center study coincides with Democrats criticizing GOP lawmakers for hosting a planned fundraiser titled “Aiming for Liberty,” encouraging attendees to bring firearms and offering the chance to fire an M-60 machine gun.
I think it may be that people who have less personal experience of gun use and gun ownership while being subjected to abuses at the hands of those who do have guns are more afraid of guns. Both blacks and whites in the US are familiar with what happens when only the “other guy” has a gun but they’ve also experienced the value of “gun parity.” I do not know what the different South and Central American gun laws are, but I understand Mexico’s are quite strict in spite of the wide abuse by criminals. I’ll be interested in reading how the questions were phrased. It would also be interesting to see how long the Hispanic subjects of the poll have resided in the US. I wonder what the Native American response in the US would be.