Four months ago, gun owners believed their world was about to close in around them, but today, polling by both Rasmussen and USA Today suggests that support for stronger gun control laws has waned considerably.
Last week’s vote on background checks and other anti-gun legislation that proved to be an embarrassment for President Barack Obama was not the final nail in the gun prohibition lobby’s coffin, but it did demonstrate that reason is returning where emotion had been busy.
USA Today even quoted Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report, who stated, "So much of the support for gun control is emotional, following the Newtown tragedy.”
This is not likely to blunt plans for the recently-formed Washington Alliance for Gun Responsibility (WAGR) to run an anti-gun initiative in 2014. This column participated in a discussion last week which will air sometime later on guns and gun rights. One of the other participants was Tina Podlodowski, one of the WAGR leaders.
The new polling results were not available then, having only been released Monday morning, but it probably will not discourage the gun control crowd. Both polls said that less than half of those surveyed – 49 percent in both surveys, coincidentally – now support tougher gun laws.
Still, the USA Today poll found only 45 percent opposition to tougher federal gun laws, so the antis still hold a statistical edge. But as the newspaper noted, in early April, NBC and the Wall Street Journal sponsored a survey that revealed 55 percent of the people favored a stricter gun law, but that was down from 61 percent in February.
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