I would submit that those folks know that "assault weapons" are fully automatic, and not the gun-controller/media's false holding of semi-automatics.
“44 percent say Americans should be prohibited from owning these types of firearms”
This is the part thats scary.
Perhaps they remember when it wasn't necessary to lock doors or worry about kids walking to school. Sometimes memories of how it was get in the way of understanding how it is. The 55+ group took patriotism and Constitutional rights as givens and many have not woken up to the trend to subjugate us. I say that as a 60-year-old who remembers how it was, but whose eyes have been open since the '70s and even more so through the '80s on up to present - Dad was a staunch conservative and life-long NRA member who turned me onto Rush, so I had help.