Since the 2012 Newtown school shooting, major anti-gun groups like Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action (both funded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg) have been pushing for more legal requirements during gun sales, better known as "universal background checks." But a new survey from Gallup shows those efforts haven't paid off and that the majority of the country does not support an increase in gun control laws. The survey also shows support for new legislation has plummeted since 2012.
Less than half of Americans, 47%, say they favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms, similar to views found last year. But this percentage is significantly below the 58% recorded in 2012 after the school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, spurred a nationwide debate about the possibility of more stringent gun control laws. Thirty-eight percent of Americans say these laws should be kept as they are now, and 14% say they should be made less strict.
A Gallup notes, these numbers aren't the lowest they've ever been. In 2011, support for new gun control measures were at an all-time low of just 43 percent.
The 47% who favor stricter laws is just above the historical low of 43% measured in 2011.
Ten years ago, three in five Americans (60%) said they favored stricter laws regulating the sale of firearms, but support fell to 44% in 2009 and remained at that level in polls conducted in the next two years. Days after the Newtown shooting, support for stricter gun sale laws swelled. Since 2012, however, Americans have retreated from those stronger attitudes about the need for more gun control, and the percentage of Americans who say the laws should be less strict -- although still low -- has edged up.
One of the biggest drops in support for more gun control comes from women, who coincidentally are the fastest growing demographic of gun owners in America. In 2012 69 percent of women supported measures like universal background checks. In 2014, it's just 55 percent. Since 2005, personal gun ownership among women has increased by nearly 80 percent.
So what does this mean? A few things. The first is that these numbers show fear mongering, smears and false accusations against the gun industry and gun shop owners individually aren't working. These numbers also prove that pro-gun activists have been successful in not only showing Americans that "universal background checks" don't work to stop crime, but are a threat to Second Amendment Rights down the road. They've also been successful at pointing out the real agenda coming from anti-gun groups funded by Bloomberg, which aren't interested in gun safety, but instead in government control. After all, back in June former executive director and face of Bloomberg's Everytown For Gun Safety (a group that used to be called Mayors Against Illegal Guns) Mark Glaze admitted that the proposals for universal background checks wouldn't stop mass shootings in the future, even though the proposals were introduced in the aftermath of mass shootings in order to take advantage of emotions during a time of crisis. And finally, the 11 percent drop in support for new gun control measures proves that people aren't buying the bogus accusations hurled at the National Rifle Association, which has been running ads on national television in order to promote law abiding citizens practicing their Second Amendment rights.
Because the numbers from Gallup still show the vast majority of Democrats and liberals still want more gun control, the battle to protect the Second Amendment rights of Americans continues.
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