Over Half of Americans Dissatisfied With Gun Laws

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jun 2, 12:17PM EDT · Published Feb 17, 9:30AM EST

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Over Half of Americans Dissatisfied With Gun Laws — © Minnesota March for Our Lives (CC BY 2.0) by Fibonacci Blue

After a mass public shooting in Lewiston Maine last year, the northeast state enacted a 72-hour waiting period when purchasing guns. Proponents of this law claim it allows for a “cooling off” period, for cases in which a violent individual is procuring the gun for the purposes of violence. Opponents say the law violates Second Amendment rights. Two Republican-led bills are attempting to repeal this waiting period, which is currently paused after a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional. The Legislature’s Judiciary Committee has voted that the bill will be reconsidered in 2026.

The above is just one example of continually changing gun laws in the country. The United States is the gun capital of the world, home to over 400 million guns (with a population of about 335 million). There is a mass shooting in America about once a week, and over 20,000 people a year commit suicide with firearms. According to the FBI gun background check data, over 3 million guns are sold monthly. (Click here to see in which states mass shootings happen the most.)
[in-text-ad]
Gun laws vary widely from state to state. In some states, people can carry guns in public. In others, the ability to buy a gun is difficult. At the federal level, Congress frequently debates whether there should be national laws about gun ownership, at least for certain kinds of firearms. These debates have not been successful as far as gun ownership restriction advocates are concerned.
[nativounit]
Gallup published a poll about the attitudes of Americans toward gun laws. According to Gallup, “Americans’ dissatisfaction with U.S. gun laws in 2025 has decreased to 58%, after rising to 64% in 2024 (the highest in Gallup’s 25-year trend).
[wallst_email_signup]
Views about gun laws were divided into several categories: very satisfied, somewhat satisfied, somewhat dissatisfied, very dissatisfied and no opinion. Those who were very dissatisfied made up 37% of the total (compared to 45% in 2024). Those who were somewhat dissatisfied made up 21% (compared to 19% in 2024.)
[recirclink id=1203714]
Back in 2023, the study concluded that “Americans today are as dissatisfied with the nation’s gun laws as they have been in the past 23 years.” However, satisfaction is on the rise by several percentage points.

This post was updated on June 2, 2025 to include information on recent gun legislation in Maine and the most recent Gallup Poll information.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.