Gun rights aren't and shouldn't be up for a popularity vote. They're rights. The Second Amendment specifically preserved the right to keep and bear arms just so it couldn't vaporize due to a popular vote or at the whims of elected elites. That said, we'd have a whole lot easier time if nobody wanted gun control in the first place, so polling matters if for no other reason than to see how far we need to go.
And a recent Gallup poll found that there was a slight dip in support for gun control compared to last year, though that's nothing to be excited about.
Fifty-six percent of Americans say laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, 27% say they should be kept as they are, and 15% want them made less strict. Support for stricter laws has edged down from last year’s 60% but matches the 2023 and 2024 readings. It remains well below the 78% high recorded in 1990, when Gallup first asked this question.
The 15% of Americans who favor less strict gun laws is a new high, one percentage point above the previous high in 2014 and three points higher than last year.
Honestly, we need to see those numbers reversed if we really want to preserve our gun rights once and for all.
And for once, Republican respondents actually gave us some very good news.
Gallup’s Oct. 1-19 poll finds that partisans continue to have markedly different views on gun laws. Currently, 16% of Republicans favor stricter laws, while half favor keeping gun laws as they are and 31% want them made less strict. This is the first time in Gallup’s trend that more Republicans favor less strict gun laws over stricter ones. The current survey also represents the lowest level of Republican support for more strict laws and the highest for less strict laws.
That's a significant difference, and while the midterms didn't turn out well for the GOP, these are ordinary voters, not elected officials. If these folks hold firm in their beliefs, then Republican lawmakers will have to take it into consideration.
Not everything is good news, though.
Most Americans surveyed want a ban on so-called assault weapons.
A separate Gallup question finds that 54% of Americans favor banning the manufacture, possession and sale of semiautomatic guns, known as assault rifles, while 44% oppose such a ban. Support is similar to the 52% recorded in 2024 and 55% in 2022 but below the 61% measured in 2019, a year marked by several high-profile mass shootings.
Democrats remain the most supportive of an assault rifle ban, at 75%, although this is below the 89% recorded in 2022 and 85% in 2019. Meanwhile, 52% of independents favor a ban, similar to previous readings, while Republican support stands at 28%, compared with 38% in 2019.
The question itself is worth noting here, because how you ask the question matters: "Do you think there should or should not be a ban on the manufacture, possession and sale of semiautomatic guns, known as assault rifles?" That's a less problematic question than many I've seen, since it deals with what people think of as assault weapons, even if there really is no such thing.
The fact that more than half of all Americans want that, including a majority of both Democrats and Independents, is troubling.
It's entirely likely that Viramontes is about to render the question moot, but it's still a legitimate issue. It's an issue because these are the exact kind of guns the Founders envisioned protecting, namely those that can be useful for defending this country from all threats, foreign and domestic.
The biggest takeaway for me from all of this is that we've got a lot of work left to do, and we need to get it done. We need to win friends and influence people to understand the importance of gun rights, the odious nature of gun control, and the role that the Bruen decision likely played in the current downtick in violent crime. People need to understand this, and we can't trust the media to actually report the truth. We have to develop our own ways to reach out and let the American people know the truth about gun rights.
We need the majority numbers to flip, because then anti-gunners can't try and use that any longer.
No, it shouldn't matter, but too many of our fellow Americans don't get that. We need to find ways to help them see the light.