40% Americans rate gun violence as top issue: survey

About 42 percent of the respondents named "crime or gun violence" as one of the most important issues facing the United States, reported U.S. news portal FiveThirtyEight on Thursday about its latest poll, reported Xinhua.

This was a rise of 19 percentage points from the first wave of the poll released in early May, by far the largest increase for any one issue it asked about, according to the poll conducted from May 26 to June 6.

The results put this issue behind only "inflation or increasing costs" as Americans' top concern for the country, said the report, noting that such concern "did vary quite a bit by (political) party."

"We also found a sizable jump in the share of Black and Hispanic Americans who named crime and/or gun violence as one of the biggest issues for the country," it added.

There have already been 248 mass shootings in the United States this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. At this point in 2021, there had been 258 mass shootings; in 2020, 173.