Global Courant
The generational disconnect suggests that broader GOP opposition to gun restrictions will be a constant irritation within a party that is already struggling to appeal to young voters. It could also challenge White House hopefuls and members of Congress to eventually refine their message about guns with Republican primary and general election voters, even if young people’s concerns don’t change GOP politics overnight. will change.
“There are specific concerns from Gen Z voters, especially because they’ve had more to do with it growing up — it’s become more rampant in society,” Joacim Hernandez, the president-elect of the Texas Young Republican Federation, said of gun violence .
“But at the same time, I really don’t know when and where that inside party conversation will take place,” Hernandez said in an interview. “You still have a lot of elected officials and Republicans within the party who don’t think we should have government interference when it comes to gun ownership.”
A partisan divide and age difference regarding gun restrictions remains deeply entrenched in American politics. Concerns about mass shootings mount in the wake of high-profile attacks before fading. But gun access has been a basic tenet for the GOP for decades, and polls show that older Republican primary voters are still among the strongest supporters of guns in the country. Plus, recent ruby Texas polls underscore the complexity of the GOP’s internal split.
A University of Texas/Texas political project poll last month found that 64 percent of all Texas Republicans supported raising the age limit for gun purchases and the concept of “red flag” laws requiring people determined to pose a risk to themselves or others to surrender their firearms. Republicans under the age of 45 supported those measures more often than older party supporters, Texas political project said Director James Henson after reviewing the poll’s underlying response data requested by POLITICO.
Still, Texas lawmakers have considered a series of gun restrictions with little progress. The state’s low voter turnout helps create competitive GOP primaries that invite challengers eager to capitalize on any backlash to liberal-backed gun safety policies. Other political concerns compete for attention, and Texas conservatives generally tend to blame a wide variety of factors for mass shootings — but not guns.
“You can find evidence that younger Republicans seem less supportive of gun rights rather than public safety considerations,” Henson said in an interview. “But the difference isn’t that great, and the proportion of young Republicans is small enough as a share of total Republicans, that I wouldn’t expect to see a shift in the center of gravity of guns controlled by younger Republican voters.”
Despite the headwinds in Texas, young conservative attitudes across the country seem to be evolving in a way that some Democrats and gun safety advocates see as an opening for new policies.
Not only is a significant portion of Republicans expressing support for liberal gun laws, but politicians are increasingly confronted by a cohort of young people whose lives have been scarred by campus gun attacks and school shootings.
“I think Republicans definitely have a generational problem with guns and other issues,” said John Della Volpe, a millennial and Gen Z voter research specialist who advised President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
A nationwide poll of 18 to 29 year olds conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics found in mid-March that 59 percent of young Republicans favored psychological screenings for all gun purchases — a version of “red flag” measures largely supported by Democrats.
“The right to feel safe in school, safe in public and safe in your own home is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed if anyone is going to have a conversation with younger people to get ahead,” said Della Volpe, who also the director of polls at Harvard’s Political Institute.
“If there is no agreement on the issue that these values are real, that they come from somewhere that is central to a generation’s life and identity, then the GOP will probably be a regional party by the time this generation reaches the reached middle age.” he said.
The Republican National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.
The YouGov Social Change Monitor, a biweekly survey of 1,500 U.S. adults surveyed between June 2020 and March 2023 found that nationwide support from Generation Z and millennial Republicans for stricter gun laws increased to 47 percent in February, compared to 41 percent in August 2022. Thirty-two percent of young Republicans said the Constitution only protects access to guns for militias — more than double the number of older Republicans who expressed that belief.
Thirty-six percent of young GOP backers in the Harvard survey, meanwhile, said gun laws should be stricter than they are now. In fact, a combined 27 percent of young Republicans said they strongly or somewhat supported an assault weapons ban.
“There is a clear generation gap, especially within the Republican Party,” said Zeenat Yahya, policy director for the March for Our Lives gun safety organization.
“We’re seeing this uptick in young Republicans who care a lot more about this issue — that’s perfectly fair if young people are the ones bearing the brunt of this issue, as it’s the leading cause of death for children and teens,” Yahya said. “It really makes it clear, I think, that the Second Amendment is not necessarily the third-rail political problem that politicians think it is.”
And there are signs that the White House sees an opportunity.
Vice President Kamala Harris held a campaign-style rally Friday at a suburban Virginia high school gymnasium to show how gun restrictions and young voters will play out on Biden’s re-election fields.
“It’s a false choice to suggest that we have to choose between supporting the Second Amendment or passing reasonable gun safety laws,” Harris said. “We can do both.”
But Texas, the location of what Biden described as Robb Elementary’s “killing field” as he commemorated the one-year anniversary of the Uvalde massacre, illustrates the slim chance that only young conservatives will change the GOP’s gun policy.
“I think people prefer the security of being armed,” said Hernandez, the young Texas Republican. “And if at some point a weaker generation prefers the government to just take care of them, that will be the case.”
