New Poll Looks at Gun Ownership in Wisconsin

Thursday, December 7th, 2023 -- 2:01 PM

(John Diedrich, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) A new poll paints a revealing new picture of gun ownership in Wisconsin, one of 354 gun owners in the state to take a poll conducted by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel through Marquette University’s O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism and in collaboration with the Marquette Law School.

According to John Diedrich with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the online poll was conducted by Dynata LLC, a survey company, in May of this year. It is the most extensive, in-depth survey of the views of Wisconsin gun owners to date.

The results indicate that the state’s long-standing gun culture dominated by hunting is changing as more people buy guns for self-protection. The poll also defies some stereotypes of how often people keep loaded guns easily accessible in their homes or use them to defend themselves.

Here are some takeaways from the poll. A majority of the gun owners polled said they keep guns secured in some kind of safe or locking device. Women are more likely to lock up their guns than men.

Gun owners living in urban areas are more likely than those living in suburban and rural areas to keep their guns loaded. The same goes for those who have a concealed-carry permit, but those with permits are more likely to keep those loaded guns locked up.

Some 46 of 354 gun owners polled reported they had used a firearm defensively. Seven people reported they fired a gun in such a situation. Some 114 people said they bought guns during the pandemic; 31 of those were buying their first gun.

Self-protection was the most common reason given for buying a gun during the pandemic and racial unrest. About one in five, or 65 of the 354 surveyed, said they knew a gun owner who had had suicidal thoughts.

The poll results come as part of a series by the Journal Sentinel that revealed a more complete picture of gun deaths across Wisconsin, a number that has nearly doubled since 2004.

Some 71 of every 100 gun deaths in the state are suicides, with rural areas being affected the most. Last year, for the first time, more than 500 people died by suicide with a gun, according to preliminary figures.

The Journal Sentinel poll echoes findings of other polls but also diverges in some key areas, for instance, on how often guns are used defensively and how guns are stored at home. The defensive gun rate in the Journal Sentinel poll was higher than several studies that put the rate between 3% and 8%.

But it was lower than other polls, which found that as many as one in three gun owners used a gun defensively. Roughly half of Wisconsin’s 2.4 million homes have guns in them, according to surveys by pollster Charles Franklin from the Marquette Law School.

The percentage of gun ownership varies depending on location in the state. For instance, earlier polling by Franklin shows that 31% of Milwaukee County households had a gun while nearly 60% of Green Bay households had a gun.

The respondents in the Journal Sentinel poll tended to be older (about half 55 or above) and were overwhelmingly white (91%), attended at least some college (85%) and had no children at home (70%). The largest area of respondents was from the Milwaukee area.

Nearly half of the respondents in the Journal Sentinel poll were women, which likely over-represents the number of gun owners in the state, which based on earlier polling by Franklin is estimated to be closer to 40%.

That figure, however, has been climbing since the pandemic, according to several polls nationwide.

Feel free to contact us with questions and/or comments.