We’ve Learned a Few Things from Talking to Gun Owners
And the data might surprise you
Most of what gets said about gun owners in this country is said about them, not to them. The assumptions get made, the positions get assigned, and the conversation proceeds as if everyone already knows how it ends.
For years now, we’ve been doing something a little unusual in this space: actually asking gun owners what they think, in their own words, instead of guessing or assuming. National surveys, focus groups, years of listening. And the picture that’s emerged is a lot more hopeful, and a lot more specific, than the one you usually see in a headline or a cable news segment.
What’s surprised us most isn’t what gun owners think about any particular policy. It’s how much everything else matters. Who’s actually in the room turns out to be different from what most people expect. Who’s doing the talking changes what gets heard. The specific words chosen can open a door or close it before anyone gets to the substance. And underneath all of it sits a value most gun owners already hold, one that rarely gets acknowledged by the people trying to reach them.
Here’s some of what’s stuck with us.
Most Gun Owners Aren’t on the Extremes
It’s easy to assume that America is split cleanly into two camps: non-gun owners who want every gun safety measure on the table, and gun owners who want none of them. But the data on gun owners just doesn’t back that up.
The biggest segments of gun owners are those who are already supportive of practical safety measures, and gun owners who are open to them, especially when those measures explicitly respect gun rights. Put those two groups together and you get a majority (70%) of gun owners who are ready and willing to engage on safety. The loudest voices on either extreme just aren’t where most people actually are.
That matters for anyone trying to have a real conversation instead of refighting the same tired arguments. The goal was never to convince a hostile audience. It’s to recognize that most of the audience was never hostile to begin with.
Who’s Delivering the Message Matters as Much as the Message Itself
One of the clearest findings, over and over, is that gun owners weigh information differently depending on who’s giving it to them. Perhaps not too surprisingly, trust in politicians, on this topic, is quite low, regardless of party. But trust in other gun owners, in veterans, in local law enforcement, in people who’ve actually lived the experience of owning and using a firearm? That trust is high, and it holds up across the political spectrum.
This is a pretty intuitive thing once you say it out loud, but it’s easy to forget in practice. A pamphlet from a government agency and an offhand comment from a neighbor who hunts every fall are not received the same way, even if they say the exact same thing. If you want to actually reach someone, the question “who is saying this” deserves at least as much attention as “what are we saying.”
Some Words Open Doors, Others Close Them
Maybe the most practically useful thing we’ve learned is how much language alone shapes whether a conversation goes anywhere. Two people can describe the exact same policy idea and get wildly different reactions, just based on word choice. Terms that sound abstract, moralizing, or politically loaded—even when well-intentioned—tend to make people defensive fast. Terms that are concrete and behavior-focused, the kind that describe something a person can actually picture themselves doing, land very differently.
The data is consistent: specificity builds trust, while vagueness erodes it. Talking about “training” and “secure storage” gets a much different (and better) reception than talking about “the problem with guns in this country,” even though the underlying concern is the same. People don’t just hear what you’re proposing. They hear what they think you assume about them. Word choice is where that assumption gets revealed, for better or for worse.
Responsibility Is at the Heart of Gun Owner Identity
Maybe the throughline across everything we’ve found is this: for most gun owners, being safe and being responsible isn’t an idea imposed on them from outside. It’s already part of how they see themselves. Safe storage, training, teaching the next generation how to handle a firearm properly—none of these are a hard sell. They’re already firm markers of identity for most gun owners, in the same way “good driver” or “good neighbor” function as identity markers for people in other contexts.
That distinction changes everything about how a conversation should go. You don’t have to persuade someone to care about something they already care about. You have to recognize that they care about it in the first place, and build the conversation from there instead of around it.
Why We Keep Coming Back to This
None of this is rocket science, and none of it requires anyone to abandon their actual policy goals. It’s a reminder not to default to cliched stereotypes, and to listen rather than fill in the blanks with assumptions about gun owners.
We’ve found, again and again, that when conversations about gun safety start from where gun owners already are—their values, their trusted messengers, their own language—those conversations tend to go somewhere. When they start from assumptions about where gun owners must be, they tend to go off the rails.
We’ll keep sharing what we learn. There’s more where this came from, and we suspect it’ll keep surprising you.
Do you have a comment about any of these critical issues? Do you have a story to share? We’d love to hear from you. Please include your first name and state, and we may publish it in a future issue. Thank you for reading!
For more information about 97Percent, please visit our website at 97Percent.us.
Join our growing community of gun owners and non-gun owners united to reduce gun deaths in America.