While gun control didn't seem to be the driving issue of the 2024 election, it was still something that kept being brought up over and over, and not just by one group of candidates or another. The media pushed the idea that it was a key issue as well.

And considering how the election turned out, if it was an important issue for the voters, it wasn't because they were tripping over themselves to pass gun control.

Democrats got largely trounced, losing the White House, the Senate, and they seem to be still losing ground in the House.

But Gallup wants you to know that the majority of Americans still want gun control.

Majorities of Americans continue to favor stricter gun laws and an assault weapons ban in the U.S., but the public remains largely opposed to a ban on handguns.

A stable 56% of U.S. adults support stricter laws covering the sale of firearms in general, while 33% prefer the laws be kept as they are now and 10% want them to be less strict.

Americans continue to oppose an outright ban on handgun possession. In fact, the 20% of U.S. adults who would favor a law banning the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons, is down seven percentage points from last year and statistically tied with the 19% record low in the 65-year trend.

Americans are much more inclined to favor a ban on assault weapons, with a slim 52% majority saying there should be a ban on the manufacture, possession and sale of semiautomatic guns, known as assault rifles. However, the current level of support is lower than what Gallup measured in two prior surveys.

These data are from Gallup’s Oct. 1-12 Crime poll.

So this is from less than a month before the election, and yet, pro-gun Republicans ran the table. They won just about everything they could win with a few notable exceptions, often cases where a candidate was so terrible that they couldn't have won no matter what.

What happened?

Well, first, let's remember that pollster Nate Silver called shenanigans on the presidential polling leading up to the election. He got it wrong too, mind you, but he argued that the fact that every poll was basically the same suggested someone or several someones were putting their finger on the scale.

If that happened, what's to stop someone from doing in on a poll like this?

First, Gallup notes that support is more or less down for a number of important policy proposals, so there's that.

Also, with regard to the election, something they never ask about is whether or not this is an issue that will drive someone's vote. That's an important point because if it's not, there's no point in campaigning on it, especially when the other side of the discussion will decide who to vote for based on such a position.

This is why anyone prattling on about how popular gun control should be ignored.

One of many lessons to be learned about 2024 is that gun control isn't a winning issue for Democrats regardless of what Gallup finds in their polls.