Montanans overwhelmingly say they support the state’s current gun laws. Sixty-five percent of adults surveyed say the state’s gun law’s are about right, according to the latest MSU Billings poll.
Jacob Cattnach was one of the MSUB students who queried Montanans for the poll.
"In the spectrum of gun laws between here and anywhere else in the United States, we are actually very lax on our gun laws. So that is to say Montanans probably support a lax gun policy as opposed to a very strict gun policy."
The MSUB graduate student is studying this issue. He says Montanans' views on guns were not dependent on the respondent’s gender, education level or income.
"The research that I did to kinda explore these areas, we have a pretty heavy gun culture here in Montana. And that tends to override emerging ideas and emerging concerns, social concerns about this. So when you see like these really high-profile events happen, like these big shootings and things like that, here in Montana we remain fairly unmoved from a policy perspective because that culture tends to override that."
The poll did find that Montanans who self identified as liberal were significantly more likely than self identified conservatives to say gun laws should be stricter.
A total of 435 Montanans were surveyed by land line or cell phone. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.