Massacre at School Sways Public in Way Earlier Shootings Didn’t

[SecularMotion]

The massacre of children at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., appears to be profoundly swaying Americans’ views on guns, galvanizing the broadest support for stricter gun laws in about a decade, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll.

As President Obama tries to persuade a reluctant Congress to pass new gun laws, the poll found that a majority of Americans — 54 percent — think gun control laws should be tightened, up markedly from a CBS News poll last April that found that only 39 percent backed stricter laws.

The rise in support for stricter gun laws stretched across political lines, including an 18-point increase among Republicans. A majority of independents now back stricter gun laws.

Whether the Newtown shooting — in which 20 first graders and 6 adults were killed — will have a long-term effect on public opinion of gun laws is hard to assess just a month after the rampage. But unlike the smaller increases in support for gun control immediately after other mass shootings, including after the 2011 shooting in Tucson that severely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the latest polling results suggest a deeper, and possibly more resonating, shift.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/18/us/poll-shows-school-shooting-sways-views-on-guns.html

[Berserker]

1. It may also

Be the one shooting that tore at everyone's heart.
But I also think that because of the instant reporting and internet, news like this goes world wide in seconds. In the past we have had hundreds of school shootings in this country many nobody even heard of going back to 1764.
That's a long time before so called assault weapons were invented.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States

The earliest known United States shooting to happen on school property was the Pontiac's Rebellion school massacre on July 26, 1764, where four Lenape American Indians entered the schoolhouse near present-day Greencastle, Pennsylvania, shot and killed schoolmaster Enoch Brown, and killed nine or ten children (reports vary). Only three children survived.

[spin]

2. That's today. ...

Wait six months or a year or two. Opinions may well change as the emotion dies down.

That's why it is wise for gun control advocates to push as hard as they can for stronger laws NOW.

Unfortunately Congress doesn't seem willing to act quickly which is not surprising as it appears to be incapable of doing anything except bicker and play political games to regain office.

The backlash of all this talk which has included banning certain firearms may occur in the midterm elections and if it does it will hurt many good Democrats.

Time will tell.