



The Senate finally struck a deal Wednesday for expanding background checks for gun buyers. Although lawmakers say they don’t want to force background checks on private transactions, a recent poll conducted by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns found that an average of 86 percent of voters in 21 states support mandatory background checks for all gun sales, no matter where the gun is sold or who’s selling it.

Here’s a map based on the data. Click on a state to see the grade the National Rifle Association gives its senators.

Background checks look at information like a buyer’s criminal record, citizenship, some mental-health records, and whether or he or she has been dishonorably discharged from the military. Since 1998, about two percent of background checks have led to gun purchases being denied.

Erika Soto Lamb, a spokesperson for Mayors Against Illegal Guns, says that the organization only polled voters in states that it considers to be key in next year’s congressional elections (about 600 people in each state were polled). The group also polled 41 congressional districts and found that on average, 89 percent of voters in all of the districts support mandatory background checks. “We haven’t ruled out any future [polling] that will help us make the case for background checks and other common sense gun law reforms that Americans overwhelmingly support,” Lamb says.