Young voters split on gun control despite shared fear of mass shootings

Survey finds gun views split along party, gender lines

Turanovic and Lloyd, who study the impacts of victimization and gun violence among young people, framed their work around a generational claim that has gained traction among researchers. Today’s young adults are the first group to grow up entirely in the post-9/11, post-Columbine High School era, with routine lockdown drills, heightened security in schools, and constant media coverage of mass violence. Researchers have labeled them the “massacre generation.”

Their survey of nearly 1,700 young adults asked respondents to rate, on a scale from 1 to 3, how much they feared becoming a victim of a mass shooting. More than 60% reported moderate or high levels of fear, including about 17% who fell in the high-fear range.

The survey found broad support for several restrictions, but no unified direction. About two-thirds of respondents said people should need a permit to carry a gun in public and that guns should not be allowed on college campuses. About six in 10 disagreed that owning more guns makes people safer, and a similar share disagreed that gun control laws are unconstitutional.

Those aggregate numbers concealed sharper divisions within the cohort. Among young adults overall, greater fear of mass shootings correlated with stronger support for gun restrictions. For young men, Republicans, and those identifying as politically conservative, the pattern reversed: the more they feared, the less they supported restrictions. “Young adults are divided on gun control, and those divisions are sharpest when fear runs high,” Turanovic and Lloyd wrote.

The psychological reach of mass shootings, the authors argued, extends far beyond their share of gun deaths. Mass shootings account for about 1% of gun deaths in the U.S., yet in a 2019 American Psychological Association survey, nearly 80% of Americans said the possibility of a mass shooting caused them stress, and a third said they avoided certain places because of it. Clinicians have developed screening tools to assess and treat mass-violence anxiety, the authors noted.

Federal gun policy, they added, has barely budged even as mass shootings have recurred across decades. Where state and local governments have passed assault weapons bans — including in Connecticut and Cook County, Illinois — those measures now face Second Amendment challenges before the Supreme Court.

Young adults have been among the most visible voices on both sides. March for Our Lives, the organization founded by survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, continues to press for stricter gun laws. Gun rights advocates counter with the “good guy with a gun” argument, a phrase popularized by the National Rifle Association that holds more armed citizens could stop active shooters and that restrictions should be eased.

Academic research has not supported that argument, the authors wrote. A 2021 study found that mass shootings were more common in states with higher rates of gun ownership, and that gun homicides were more common in states with looser concealed-carry laws.

Some young people have lived through that violence more than once. When a gunman opened fire at Brown University in December 2025, at least two students on campus had already survived a prior school shooting. In April 2025, students who had lived through the 2018 Parkland shooting found themselves caught in another mass shooting, this one at Florida State University. “This is America,” one of them told the researchers.

With the November midterms approaching, gun policy will be on the ballot directly in at least two states. Massachusetts voters will decide whether to keep or repeal a 2024 law that requires gun owners to register their firearms with the state, expands safety training for license applicants, and broadens the state’s ban on assault-style weapons. Arkansas voters will decide whether to amend the state constitution to more strongly protect gun rights, including the right to own ammunition and gun parts.

Nearly 50 million Americans ages 18 to 29 are eligible to vote in the upcoming midterm elections, and about 60% say they plan to, which would break midterm turnout records for voters under 30 if they follow through. Whether that turnout produces a coherent electoral signal on gun policy remains an open question, the authors suggested, since shared fear within the cohort does not translate into shared policy preferences.