The gun control lobby is pouring tens of millions of dollars into House and Senate races around the country in their attempt to gain an anti-gun majority in Congress, but a new survey from Pew Research shows groups like Everytown and Giffords are facing an uphill battle in getting voters to agree with them.
While the survey found that "gun policy" was only the 10th most important issue for voters overall, there's a sizable gap between Republican and Democrat voters. 54 percent of Republicans surveyed called gun policy a very important issue, compared to just 40 percent of Democrats. The divide is even starker on the issue of violent crime, with 64 percent of Republicans (and 52 percent of independents) calling it very important, compared to just 37 percent of Democrats.
Republicans generally lead on law-and-order issues like violent crime anyway, but the gun control lobby is insistent that a majority of Americans strongly support its anti-2A agenda. According to Pew's survey, that doesn't appear to be the case this cycle.
The findings are important enough that Pew explicitly pointed to the shift on "gun policy," noting that when it surveyed voters four years ago, 62 percent of Democrats ranked "gun policy' as a very important issue. The 22-point drop is second only to abortion in terms of issues that have become less important to Democrat voters this cycle.
In a way, both of those declines make sense. When Pew conducted its 2022 survey in August of that year, the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade was about six weeks old, and the nation was still reeling from the shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas less than three months earlier.
Four years later, access to abortion is still very important to about half of Democrat voters, but the U.S. hasn't turned into Gilead and (like it or not) abortions are still widely available in much of the country. Thankfully, we have not had a school shooting on the scale of Robb Elementary since that horrific tragedy, and in fact "mass shootings" are down substantially since 2022.
The Gun Violence Archive, which uses a very broad definition of "mass shooting", reported 645 in 2022. In 2025 that number had declined to 408.
Violent crime overall is down across the country, and the FBI reported earlier this year that the 2025 homicide rate was the lowest recorded since at least 1950. That's incredibly good news, but it also means that high-profile shootings aren't dominating the news cycle like they did in the months before the 2022 elections.
If "gun policy" and "violent crime" were the top issues for voters this cycle, Republicans would be in really good shape. Unfortunately, the economy is the most important concern for Americans across the political spectrum, and with Republican majorities in the House and Senate, and Donald Trump in the White House, the party is getting the lion's share of the blame for the high price of beef, gasoline, and even electricity.
The party in power generally loses seats in the midterms, but the big question right now is "how many"? Pre-election polling has produced some wildly different results in some races, and many races appear to be within the margin of error with less than a month to go before Election Day. The gun control lobby is spending big to tip the scales in some of the most competitive districts, and unfortunately groups like the National Rifle Association simply don't have the financial resources to keep up with billionaires like Michael Bloomberg.
What we do have, though, is a winning argument when it comes to the issues of gun policy, violent crime, and our right to keep and bear arms. We might not be able to flood the airwaves with ads in support of pro-Second Amendment candidates, but we can still volunteer for their campaigns. We can talk about these issues with our families, friends, and neighbors (in a way that invites conversation, not conflict, if we want to have an impact). And yes, if we have the money, we can and should kick in a contribution to a pro-Second Amendment group or the campaign of our choice to try to counter the spending of our billionaire political adversaries.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their extreme gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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