WASHINGTON—After a steady string of mass shootings and a revival of the political fight over gun control, Americans are slightly more likely than they were two years ago to say gun laws should be made stricter, a new Associated Press-GfK poll found.

Despite the uptick in favour of tighter gun laws, Americans remain deeply divided along party, gender and geographic lines on an issue that has ricocheted into the presidential campaign. Eight in 10 Democrats favour stricter gun laws, while 6 in 10 Republicans want them left as they are or loosened.

Still, the results show the calls for tighter laws have some bipartisan appeal, with 37 per cent of Republicans, including 31 per cent of conservative Republicans, favouring stricter gun laws.

The new poll was taken two weeks after the shooting rampage at a community college in Oregon thrust the discussion of gun control into the country’s attention and the presidential campaign. Polls regularly find a rise in support for tighter gun laws after such shootings — although that support often levels off as the headlines fade.

In December 2013, one year after a mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, 52 per cent of Americans said gun laws should be made tighter. That number was 58 per cent in the new poll, while 27 per cent said they think laws should be left as they are and 12 per cent favoured making gun laws less strict.

Over a third of Americans said gun laws should be made much stricter, up from 29 per cent who said so in the 2013 poll.

And they were slightly less inclined to see laws limiting gun ownership as an infringement on the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. Forty-five per cent saw such laws as an infringement; 51 per cent did not. In the 2013 poll, 50 per cent said gun laws infringe on the right to bear arms and 47 per cent said they did not.

Gun control has become one of the top issues in the Democratic presidential primary, as front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised to take executive action to expand background checks and accused Republicans of bowing to the powerful gun lobby. President Barack Obama has said he plans to use his bully pulpit to press lawmakers to pass tougher laws, although there’s little sign of momentum in the Republican-run Congress.

The poll finds Democratic politicians are in line with their party’s loyalists. Democrats are more likely than Republicans — 69 per cent to 55 per cent — to say gun laws are very or extremely important to them.

City and suburban dwellers are more likely to back tighter laws than rural Americans.

Americans are equally divided over which party they trust to do a better job handling the issue. Twenty-nine per cent say they trust the Republicans more and 27 per cent trust the Democrats more, while 13 per cent say they trust both equally. An additional 30 per cent say they trust neither party on handling the issue.

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Unchanged since 2013 is the share of Americans living in a household where at least one person owns a gun — about one-third. About half of Republicans live in households with a gun, compared with less than a third of Democrats or independents.

The AP-GfK Poll of 1,027 adults was conducted online Oct. 15 to Oct. 19, using a sample drawn from GfK’s probability-based KnowledgePanel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.

Respondents were first selected randomly using telephone or mail survey methods, and later interviewed online. People selected for KnowledgePanel who didn’t otherwise have access to the Internet were provided access at no cost to them.