A Wall Street Journal/NBC News gun violence poll has found that 71 percent of Americans now believe that random acts of violence have become a regular part of American life.
The
Journal also said the number of Americans who fear they will be a victim of a terrorist attack – 29 percent – is roughly equivalent to how U.S. residents polled shortly after the 9/11 attacks. The poll released on Monday comes on the heels of terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
Some 1,000 adults were interviewed for the poll, nearly 400 via cell phone, from Dec. 6-9, according to
NBC News. The poll has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.
"These results do not represent blips on the radar but a true psychological shift in American attitudes," Democratic pollster Fred Yang, told the Wall Street Journal. Yang conducted the poll with Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Research.
The Journal reported that the poll exposed a partisan divide in the findings, with 78 percent of Democratic primary voters believing that mass shootings have become a permanent aspect of American life compared to 56 percent of GOP primary voters.
About 30 percent of Republican primary voters see the shootings as "unusual" and "will not happen as often in the future," while 18 percent of Democratic primary voters saw it that way.
According to NBC News, 32 percent of the respondents said they were worried that they or a loved one would be a victim of gun violence, but 67 percent said they were not worried.
Issues on guns and gun violence remain a contested political issue in the middle of a presidential election.
"It reminds me to some degree of Obamacare," Frank Newport, editor-in-chief at Gallup told
Newsweek. "Many of the individual provisions of the Affordable Care Act got strong approval by the public, but the overall act did not and was also very, very polarizing politically."
Newport added that gun control "symbolically has a very polarizing political aspect to it."
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