Support For Gun Control Drops From Post-Parkland Spike

Following the Parkland massacre, the nation was crowing for gun control. I said then that it would come down soon enough. All we had to do was wait it out.

And then it continued.

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For two months now, the pressure has been maintained, far longer than anyone expected it to last. Give the Parkland crowd credit, they kept the shooting in the news cycle for far longer than it should have been, thus keeping sympathy for gun control measures up.

Now, it seems, reality is coming into play, and all that pro-gun support? It’s not what it used to be.

Public support for more stringent gun-control legislation has decreased significantly after surging in the wake of the February mass shooting that claimed 17 lives in Parkland, Fla., according to a Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday.

The number of respondents who support “stricter gun control laws” has fallen ten percentage points after peaking at 66 percent on February 20, just six days after the Parkland massacre.

A ten point drop is significant, and while the Parkland kids still have a pretty favorable rating, it doesn’t really matter if fewer people are supporting their positions.

Anti-gunners will call this apathy, but the reality is that more and more people are calming down and no longer deciding things based on emotions. Instead, they’re looking at facts, and the facts don’t really support gun control, especially since school shootings have been dropping for years. They’re just not that big of a threat. You have a better chance of being hit by a meteorite than being killed in a mass shooting.

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Those facts, coupled with the reality that humans have a God-given, natural right to keep and bear arms, eventually found a way through all the anti-gun noise the media pushes in the aftermath of a shooting like Parkland.

It’s not apathy but realism that keeps things as they are. People are realistic about the fact that gun control won’t stop these killings, especially when so many are law enforcement failures, first and foremost. As a result, their support for gun control drops.

Now, I need to be realistic for a moment. Fifty-six percent of the population still supports gun control. That’s way too high, but again, it’s based on emotion, not fact. This is where the pro-Second Amendment community needs to step it up. We need to meet the fearmongering with cold, hard facts. We need to not just provide numbers, but also alternate solutions, such as law enforcement reform and encouraging research into what causes people to do things like this. A reminder that maniacs can find alternative ways to kill unless we address the core problem may well strike a chord with some folks.

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Keep in mind, though, that you’re rarely going to change the mind of whoever you’re arguing with. Their minds are made up, for the most part. However, as bestselling author, and genuine gun guy Larry Correia says regularly, arguing on the internet is a spectator sport. You’re not arguing to change that person’s mind. You’re arguing to present facts for the guys who are in the middle somewhere.

So keep it up, folks. We’re taking back the ground. We just need to take back a lot more of it.

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