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Gun Control & RKBA
Related: About this forumWhere Public Opinion On Guns Is Headed
In the last few years, gun advocates have made much of the fact that when pollsters ask people broad, non-specific questions about gun laws, like "In general, do you think gun control laws should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?", support for restrictions has gone down, in some cases below 50 percent. As I've discussed before, that doesn't mean that people ever stopped supporting specific restrictions like those we're now discussing, but there were enough polls confirming the decline in support for generalized "gun control" since the 1990s that we can be fairly sure the phenomenon was real. But now, new polling is showing increased support for restrictions. For instance, a CBS poll released the other day, which uses the text I just quoted, showed support for making laws more strict at 57 percent, an 18-point jump from when the question was asked in April and a 10-year high. A new CNN poll produced similar results, with 52 percent saying either that there should be major restrictions on guns or that all there should be no private ownership of guns at all.
So what exactly is going on, and where is opinion likely to go? I think the answer to the first question is only partly that many people were so horrified by the shooting in Newtown that they finally said enough is enough. Perhaps more importantly, people are being exposed to something they haven't seen in a long time: a two-sided debate on guns. Or actually, it's a debate where those favoring new restrictions are being heard more than the pro-gun side, at least for the moment (that won't last, though).
The prior movement in opinion away from gun restrictions isn't at all surprising, given the fact that for the last decade and a half there has been almost no national discussion about guns. The only voices being heard are those of gun advocates, who regularly warn that Democrats are coming to take away your granddad's hunting rifle and leave your family vulnerable to all manner of assault. The people who could have argued the other side were largely silent. So in the absence of elite signaling on guns from one side, public opinion shifted.
To see how this kind of thing can work, let's look at a pair of graphs from the classic study on this topic, John Zaller's The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Zaller's key insight was that the degree to which general public opinion lines up with elite opinion is a function of attention. If the elites are in agreement, the closer you pay attention to the news, the more likely you are to know that, and follow the leadership of your party. But if the elites begin to disagree, at first only the people who pay a lot of attention will realize it and move in response. He illustrates it with these two graphs, showing support for the Vietnam war in 1964when both Democrats and Republicans in Congress supported the warand 1970, by which time congressional Democrats had turned against it.
http://prospect.org/article/where-public-opinion-guns-headed
So what exactly is going on, and where is opinion likely to go? I think the answer to the first question is only partly that many people were so horrified by the shooting in Newtown that they finally said enough is enough. Perhaps more importantly, people are being exposed to something they haven't seen in a long time: a two-sided debate on guns. Or actually, it's a debate where those favoring new restrictions are being heard more than the pro-gun side, at least for the moment (that won't last, though).
The prior movement in opinion away from gun restrictions isn't at all surprising, given the fact that for the last decade and a half there has been almost no national discussion about guns. The only voices being heard are those of gun advocates, who regularly warn that Democrats are coming to take away your granddad's hunting rifle and leave your family vulnerable to all manner of assault. The people who could have argued the other side were largely silent. So in the absence of elite signaling on guns from one side, public opinion shifted.
To see how this kind of thing can work, let's look at a pair of graphs from the classic study on this topic, John Zaller's The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. Zaller's key insight was that the degree to which general public opinion lines up with elite opinion is a function of attention. If the elites are in agreement, the closer you pay attention to the news, the more likely you are to know that, and follow the leadership of your party. But if the elites begin to disagree, at first only the people who pay a lot of attention will realize it and move in response. He illustrates it with these two graphs, showing support for the Vietnam war in 1964when both Democrats and Republicans in Congress supported the warand 1970, by which time congressional Democrats had turned against it.
http://prospect.org/article/where-public-opinion-guns-headed
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Where Public Opinion On Guns Is Headed (Original Post)
SecularMotion
Jan 2013
OP
Scuba
(53,475 posts)1. Expect the gun lobby's shills to dig in their heels, hoping Sandy Hook is a distant memory by 2014.
Sadly they'll be right, because Sandy Hook will by then be down on the list of such massacres. But there's been a sea change in America. Outrage over these senseless deaths will grow, not wane.
Congress-critters can either act responsibly or face crushing defeats in 2014.
discntnt_irny_srcsm
(18,470 posts)2. regarding ^^^
"Congress-critters can either act responsibly or face crushing defeats in 2014."
My thoughts exactly.
Glaug-Eldare
(1,089 posts)4. It's telling that the only time gun control picks up steam
is when white people die -- no particular fuss over the nightly deluge of young minority men shooting each other down because of failed right-wing drug and economic policies.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)3. Public opinion will change when MSM drops this issue and moves to the SoSo.