Large portions of the American public still believe false claims of all kinds about guns, the COVID-19 pandemic and reproductive health, a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows.
Though the poll found that percentages of Americans who believe that false claims are “definitely” true is small, the portion who think they are “probably” true is substantial. Overall, between half and three-quarters of the country belong to what KFF CEO Drew Altman called the “muddled middle,” saying that the false claims were “probably” either true or false.
Perhaps most striking of the poll’s findings is the incorrect belief, held by many Americans, that guns make them safer. Sixty percent of Americans believe it’s true that armed school police guards have been proved to prevent school shootings. Eighteen percent of respondents thought the claim was “definitely” true and 42% believed it “probably” true.
In fact, as KFF noted, no studies have shown this, and researchers in 2021 found that in an examination of 133 cases of school shootings and attempted school shootings from 1980 to 2019, “armed guards were not associated with significant reduction in rates of injuries.”
What’s more, 13% believed it was “definitely” true and 29% believed it was “probably” true that people who have firearms at home are less likely to be killed by a gun than people who don’t have a gun. That’s also false: Studies have shown among other things that guns are rarely used in self-defense, that living with a handgun owner is associated with substantially elevated risk — particularly for women — of dying by homicide, that the spike in gun sales after the Sandy Hook mass shooting was linked to an increase in accidental deaths, and that handgun ownership is associated with elevated risks of death by suicide.