Americans have broad exposure to guns, whether they personally own one or not. About seven-in-ten say they have fired a gun at some point and 42% currently live in a gun-owning household.
While the demographic profile of NRA members is similar to that of other gun owners, their political views, the way they use their firearms and their attitudes about gun policy differ significantly from gun owners who are not members of the organization.
Majorities of police officers say that recent high-profile encounters between black citizens and police have made their jobs riskier and left many officers reluctant to fully carry out some of their duties.
National rates of gun homicide and other violent gun crimes are strikingly lower now than during their peak in the mid-1990s, paralleling a general decline in violent crime, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of government data. Beneath the long-term trend, though, are big differences by decade: Violence plunged through the 1990s, but has declined less dramatically since 2000.