What to do about guns

A new Gallup survey presented a range of proposals for curbing gun violence in America, and several of them garnered a broad consensus that crossed party lines. Four approaches—more training for officers responding to active shooters, background checks for all gun sales, beefing up security for people going into schools, and instituting programs to identify and manage students posing potential threats—had between 86 percent and 95 percent approval across the board. Other potential measures proved more divisive. Democrats were more in favor of raising the buying age to 21 (83 percent versus 53 percent of Republicans) and banning semi-automatics (72 percent versus 37 percent), while Republicans favored putting guns in the hands of teachers (69 percent, versus 22 percent of Democrats).