Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Young Republicans aren\u2019t clinging to guns like the rest of the GOP.<\/p>\n
As former President Donald Trump and new campaign entrants, including former Vice President Mike Pence, tout their Second Amendment bonafides and opposition to \u201cgun confiscation<\/a>\u201d to 2024 primary voters, some Gen Z and millennial Republicans are moving in the opposite direction: A significant share of younger conservatives, reared in an age of mass violence, embrace firearm restrictions.<\/p>\n One poll conducted<\/a> by Harvard\u2019s political institute this spring found that a clear majority of young conservatives supported mandatory psychological exams for gun purchasers. A separate, recurring survey from YouGov<\/a> concluded in March that Gen Z and millennial Republicans are more likely to believe in tougher gun laws than older Republicans and that young conservatives\u2019 support for the idea has grown in the past year.<\/p>\n The generational disconnect suggests broader GOP opposition to gun restrictions will be a steady irritant inside a party already struggling to appeal to young voters. It could also challenge White House hopefuls and members of Congress to eventually refine their message on guns with Republican primary and general election voters, even if the concerns of young people won\u2019t transform GOP politics overnight.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are some concerns from Gen Z voters specifically, mainly because they\u2019ve had to deal with it more growing up \u2014 it\u2019s become more rampant in society,\u201d Joacim Hernandez, the elected chairman of the Texas Young Republican Federation, said of gun violence.<\/p>\n \u201cBut at the same time, I really don\u2019t know when and where that conversation within the party will happen,\u201d Hernandez said in an interview. \u201cYou still have a lot of elected officials and Republicans within the party who don\u2019t believe we should have government interference when it comes to owning guns.\u201d<\/p>\n A partisan divide and age gap on gun restrictions remains deeply embedded in American politics. Concern about mass shootings tends to spike in the aftermath of attention-grabbing attacks before fading. But access to firearms has been a bedrock principle for the GOP for decades, and polls show older Republican primary voters remain some of the strongest firearm supporters in the country. Plus, recent polling from ruby-red Texas underscores the complexity of the GOP\u2019s internal split.<\/p>\n A University of Texas\/Texas Politics Project Poll last month<\/a> found 64 percent of all Texas Republicans supported raising the age limit on gun purchases and the concept of \u201cred flag\u201d laws that require people determined to be a risk to themselves or others to surrender their firearms. Republicans under the age of 45 tended to support those measures at higher rates than older party supporters, Texas Politics Project<\/a> Director James Henson said after examining the poll\u2019s underlying response data at POLITICO\u2019s request.<\/p>\n Yet Texas legislators have considered an array of gun restrictions with little progress. Low voter turnout in the state helps create competitive GOP primaries that invite challengers eager to exploit any backlash to liberal-backed gun safety policy. Other political concerns are competing for attention and Texas conservatives overall tend to blame a wide range of factors for mass shootings \u2014 but not guns.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can find evidence that younger Republicans appear less strongly in favor of gun rights instead of public safety considerations,\u201d Henson said in an interview. \u201cBut the difference is not so big, and the share of young Republicans is small enough as a share of overall Republicans that I would not expect there to be a shift in the center of gravity on guns driven by younger Republican voters.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite the headwinds in Texas, young conservative attitudes seem to be evolving nationwide in a way that some Democrats and gun safety advocates see as an opening for new policies. <\/p>\n Not only are a significant share of Republicans voicing support for liberal-aligned gun laws, but politicians are increasingly confronted with a cohort of young people whose lives have been marked by campus gun attacks and schoolhouse shooter drills.<\/p>\n \u201cI think Republicans certainly have a generational issue on guns and other issues,\u201d said John Della Volpe, a specialist in millennial and Gen Z voter research who advised President Joe Biden\u2019s 2020 campaign.<\/p>\n A national poll of 18- to 29-year-olds conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics<\/a> in mid-March found that 59 percent of young Republicans supported requiring psychological exams for all gun purchases \u2014 a version of \u201cred flag\u201d measures largely supported by Democrats.<\/p>\n \u201cThe 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 moving forward,\u201d said Della Volpe, who is also the director of polling at Harvard\u2019s political institute. <\/p>\n \u201cIf there\u2019s no alignment on the issue that these values are real, that they\u2019re coming from someplace central to the lives and identity of a generation, then the GOP is likely to be a regional party by the time this generation hits middle age,” he said.<\/p>\n The Republican National Committee did not respond to a request for comment. <\/p>\n