Many studies have shown that people have significant gaps in knowledge when it comes to gun laws and statistics (Aronow, 2016; Cooke, 2004; Filindra & Kaplan, 2015). I studied the pre-existing knowledge of gun laws and statistics within the United States using college students at Fort Lewis College. I did this through a short questionnaire asking about their experience with guns, knowledge regarding laws and statistics, and their opinions of these laws and statistics. I had 19 females and 17 males (36 total) participate in my study. I found that males actually knew more about guns than females did, politically affiliated people (Democrats or Republicans) believe in background checks more so than non-politically affiliated people, religion has no correlation with views about guns, and people with more gun experience are more likely to believe that households would be safer with more guns. It was not surprising that people with more gun experience believe households would be safer with guns in the home nor that politically affiliated people believe in more background checks. It was unexpected that, when it came to knowledge about guns, males knew more than females, fitting the stereotype, although religion did not fit into the stereotype of more conservative attitudes. When beginning this study, I hypothesized that people generally would not know very much about guns. This was proven, with an average score of 31.6% on the gun-related test.
