Some gun owners said the Parkland shooting motivated them to be more vocal about their support for background checks, or about long simmering discontent with the N.R.A.
“What put me over the edge was this series of recent tragedies, both in schools and in other areas, and they just never budged,” John S. Liccardi said of the N.R.A. Mr. Liccardi, 73, a hunter from Rutland, Vt., who owns several guns, stepped publicly into the gun debate for the first time in March. He denounced the N.R.A. in an op-ed[1] for the news website VTDigger.
“If there ever is going to be any progress in sensible gun ownership and control,” Mr. Liccardi said, “it has to be from the middle ground.”
Some members of gun-owning families have entered the debate hesitantly. Karen Fowkes from Vienna, Va., joined a sea of people at the March for Our Lives in Washington, D.C., last month. Her husband owned a gun, she said, and she initially worried about feeling hypocritical, but joined her daughter, Colleen, at the march after some convincing.
“I said, ‘Mom, this is not an anti-gun march,’” the younger Ms. Fowkes said. “I asked, ‘Are you for universal background checks?’ She said, ‘Yes.’”
To that, the younger Ms. Fowkes told her mother, “You are for gun control, too!”
But for other gun owners, the marches had the opposite effect.
“I have a little bit more trepidation now,” said Rob Mason, 47, an educational aide at a high school in Maineville, Ohio, outside Cincinnati, who owns several guns and practices shooting with his children at a range. “It seems like it’s going too far.”
