U.S. Gun Violence Seen as Major Problem Around the World

As Americans suffer the aftershock of another mass shooting, Morning Consult survey data from 17 countries finds overwhelming majorities of adults in highly developed nations see gun violence and overall crime as problems in the United States, and while views aren’t as dim in the developing world, they still lean negative.

U.S. Gun violence is seen worse in rich countries

• At least 7 in 10 adults in Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom say gun violence in the United States is “poor” or “terrible” while nearly as many people in Japan said the same, underlining a trend from this series in which wealthier, highly developed countriestend to hold more negative attitudestoward the United States on social issues.
• Strong negative views of gun violence seem to be fueling ill perceptions of crime in the United States as well, particularly in the developed world. At least 65% of adults in every G-7 country surveyed expressed negative views of crime in the United States.
• 相比之下的许多发展的群氓ping countries, which tend to hold more strongly negative views of gun violence in the United States than of crime. For example, Ghanaians, South Africans and Kenyans are at least 14 percentage points more likely to say crime in the United States is “fair,” “excellent,” or “good” compared with gun violence.
• Adults around the world tend to hold better views of policing in the United States, with majorities in 13 countries saying it is “fair” or better. Perceptions of police in the United States are more positive in developing countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Indonesia.

Economic and cultural peers are most likely to have negative views of the U.S.

Gun violence is much more prevalent in the United States than in other developed countries. The mass shooting on Monday at Michigan State University was the 67th thus far in 2023, according to theGun Violence Archive. That discrepancy is also evident in global sentiment, with wealthier countries tending to hold the most negative views of gun violence in the United States, though sentiment is also negative in many developing countries.

The split between highly developed countries and the rest of the world on attitudes toward crime in the United States is more pronounced. While people in highly developed countries tend to hold strongly negative views of crime in the United States, more adults than not in Chile, Indonesia, Peru, Colombia and Brazil have positive perceptions on that issue.

A different dynamic plays out when it comes to policing in the United States, with views much more likely to skew negative in Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom than anywhere else, perhaps due to higher U.S. media and news consumption. Roughly 2 in 5 adults in the three Anglosphere countries have negative perceptions of U.S. policing, higher shares than in other developed countries such as Germany, France and Japan. Meanwhile, people in many developing countries are more likely to have positive perceptions of policing in the United States than negative ones.

The Morning Consult surveys were conducted Oct. 14-18, Oct. 26-29, Nov. 16-21 and Dec. 15-30, 2022, among a representative sample of 1,000 adults in each country, with unweighted margins of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.