We’re still reeling from a rather violent spate of mass shootings. El Paso, Texas, Dayton, Ohio, and Odessa, Texas each saw some lunatic commit senseless acts of violence. Still, mass shootings are rare. Violent crime is still down. And rifles still commit the smallest share of gun deaths. It’s well below 500. And yes, it’s a numbers game. It shouldn’t be, but the anti-gun Left decided to combine homicides with suicides to inflate the number of gun deaths to manufacture a narrative that the U.S. is a shooting gallery. It’s not. And neither are our schools, which have never been safer.
Firearms reporter Stephen Gutowski of The Washington Free Beacon wrote today that despite these shootings gun control is trending downward, though expanding background checks remains high (via Free Beacon):
Polls from Quinnipiac University and an ABC News/Washington Post partnership asked about the gun control debate in America and specific gun control proposals. Both polls showed a general downward trend in support for new gun control measures even in the immediate aftermath of mass shootings in Texas and Ohio.
Neither poll found heightened enthusiasm for any gun control proposal which had been polled more than twice. Instead, they found support for gun control policies either relatively stable or declining, though still substantial.
The September 5 ABC/Washington Post poll found support for "a nationwide ban on the sale" of undefined "assault weapons" fell 6 points from last April. It now sits at 56 percent support, up 9 points from its low in 2015 but a full 24 points down from its high point in 1994, when the federal assault weapons ban went into effect. The August 29 Quinnipiac University poll had similar results on an identically worded question with support dropping 3 points to 60 percent since May 22, 2019, and down 7 points from its highest level on February 20, 2018.
The retreat from high-water marks following the February 2018 Parkland shooting was evident in nearly all of the questions. The Quinnipiac poll found general support for "stricter gun laws" fell 6 points to 60 percent since last February. It also found a 3 point drop in the percentage of people who say "Congress needs to do more to reduce gun violence" from 75 percent last February to 72 percent this September, and a 4 point drop in support for universal background checks over that time.
Despite this slight downward trend, expanding background checks still enjoys 93 percent support in the latest poll.
You just need to give it time and people start coming to their senses. Still, a so-called "assault weapons" ban is probably not going to happen at the federal level. At the state level, there isn’t much we can do besides legal action in anti-gun states who make their gun control laws even more strict. These proposals should not be taken off the action list, but more kept on the periphery. What we need to focus on are these red flag law proposals and expanded background checks, both of which are backdoor ways to a national registry and gun confiscation.
If there are solid due process mechanisms and explicit outlines as to the process of defining someone a potential risk and taking away their firearms if they’re gun owners, then I’m on board. The problem is that we have this thing called the Democratic Party. They don’t want due process. They don’t even want that for when we have to talk about rape allegations. If Democrats didn’t exist, this could work. Alas, we can’t always get what we want. So, what we can do is derail these efforts since it won’t enhance public safety with Democrats in the mix. In their world, tweeting skepticism about so-called global warming could constitute activities that could endanger the public welfare. Mean tweets would be on their too. It’s absurd. As for expanded background checks, private sales are not illegal, nor are they the problem. The vast majority of private sales, which are estimated to be in the single digits, are among family members. The only way to account for these rare sales is a national registry. That’s also unacceptable. We all know this. And these two areas are the most likely to gain traction to becoming law on the Hill.
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