Gallup records that:
Less than half of Americans, 47%, say they favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms, similar to views found last year. But this percentage is significantly below the 58% recorded in 2012 after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, spurred a nationwide debate about the possibility of more stringent gun control laws. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say these laws should be kept as they are now, and 14% say they should be made less strict.
. . .
Ten years ago, three in five Americans (60%) said they favored stricter laws regulating the sale of firearms, but support fell to 44% in 2009 and remained at that level in polls conducted in the next two years. Days after the Newtown shooting, support for stricter gun sale laws swelled. Since 2012, however, Americans have retreated from those stronger attitudes about the need for more gun control, and the percentage of Americans who say the laws should be less strict — although still low — has edged up.
. . .
Public demand for stricter gun sale laws is returning to levels seen throughout the past decade. After seeing a spike in support for stricter laws following the Newtown school shooting in 2012, the call for more stringent laws has settled to near-record lows.
What does this mean in practice? Well, for a start it undermines the popular claim that “90 percent” of Americans want “universal background checks.” After all, if 52 percent of Americans are against “stricter laws covering the sale of firearms,” then they are by definition against mandating background checks on private sales.
As it stands, federal law requires a background check to be run for any firearms transaction that goes through a federally licensed dealer — that’s sales that take place in a gun store, sales that take place at a commercial booth at a gun show, exchanges that cross state lines, and so on. Federal law does not, however, require background checks on firearms transactions between private individuals who reside within the same state — that’s friends exchanging firearms, private sellers advertising guns on the internet and selling to private buyers, hobbyists selling a few guns on the side, and so forth. When the Left says that it wants “universal background checks,” it means that it wishes to impose the same federal laws that apply to commercial transactions to private transactions, too. (A few states do this, but most do not.) If Gallup is correct, a majority of people in America oppose this, believing either that the current arrangement is acceptable or that the process should be further loosened. “Thirty-eight percent of Americans,” the poll shows, “say these laws should be kept as they are now, and 14% say they should be made less strict.” Uh oh. One cannot simultaneously hope that the laws will be made stricter and that the laws will remain the same or be loosened, can one?
At the very least, we could suggest that Gallup’s findings suggest that public opinion is this area is fickle, that the public has been misled as to what “universal background check” actually means, or, perhaps, that voters’ responses depend heavily on how such questions are asked — all possibilities that, frankly, should worry us. We are talking about a basic individual right here. Is the public really so chronically ill-informed that a slight change in the wording of an inquiry can yield entirely contradictory results? Is it so susceptible to progressives lying about “gun show loopholes” and “sales over the Internet” that it will sign onto anything if it feels sufficiently sad about the news? One hopes not.
In fact, I think not. Rather, the “90 percent” number has always been more myth than reality, and this is yet another nail in its coffin. Indeed, even at the height of post-Newtown grief, the public gave no indication of such support. In April of last year, Gallup reported that:
Sixty-five percent of Americans say the U.S. Senate should have passed the measure that would have expanded background checks for gun purchases, while 29% agree with the Senate’s failure to pass the measure.
Gallup also confirms that the golden age of serious gun control is well and truly over. There is a good reason that the Brady Campaign changed its name from Handgun Control Inc.:
As support for stricter laws regulating the sale of guns has dwindled, the percentage of Americans who say handguns should be banned has remained low. About one in four Americans say handgun possession should be banned for everyone except the police and “other authorized persons” such as security or the military. A near-record high of 73% of Americans now say that handguns should not be banned.
While Americans overwhelmingly say that there should not be a ban on handguns, this has not always been the case. When Gallup first asked this question in 1959, 60% favored a ban on handguns, except for those carried by police officers and similar authorities. By 1975, that number had slipped to 41%, with 55% saying they opposed such a ban. The percentage opposing has stayed above 50% ever since.
The “bottom line,” per Gallup:
Public demand for stricter gun sale laws is returning to levels seen throughout the past decade. After seeing a spike in support for stricter laws following the Newtown school shooting in 2012, the call for more stringent laws has settled to near-record lows. The percentage of Americans who say that handguns should not be banned is at a near-record high as well. This suggests that while shootings may still occur with disturbing regularity in the U.S., there is a disconnect between those events and support for making gun laws stricter.
In my view, the reason that there is such a persistent “disconnect” here is that there is rarely any rational connection between the events that prompt us reconsider our gun laws and the specific changes that are proposed. Nowadays, a majority of Americans appears to recognize a) that whatever the details of a given shooting, the same cast of characters comes out of the woodwork to suggest the same set of unrelated new laws; b) that in a country with this many firearms, it is not possible to reduce crime or to discourage serial killers by irritating the law-abiding; and c) that, despite the media’s increasing hysteria, the last two decades have seen a dramatic increase in the number of guns in private hands, a loosening of the laws governing those guns, and — whether in consequence or by coincidence — a 50 percent reduction in the number of crimes involving firearms. It really shouldn’t be surprising that Gallup has discovered a lack of enthusiasm for increased authority. What, exactly, would have led voters to support it?