As I’ve said numerous times over recent years, the tide is turning in the battle over gun rights as it becomes more apparent that anti-gunner propaganda isn’t working as effectively as it has in the past.
A new Gallup poll reveals some positive findings for gun rights advocates, showing that the anti-gunner lobby is failing to convince people to abandon their Second Amendment rights. Support for banning handguns has fallen to a near-record low while the percentage of Americans supporting assault weapons bans has remained stagnant.
A majority of Americans (56 percent) still favor stricter laws for gun sales, a figure that has remained unchanged over recent years despite how fervently anti-gunners have exploited mass shootings to push their agenda. “Calls for tougher gun control have generally spiked in the wake of prominent mass shootings and fallen as the media coverage of each has faded,” Gallup noted.
The most recent example of this was in the aftermath of the May 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that claimed the lives of 21 people. In the month after the attack, support for stricter gun laws jumped to 66%. Yet, by October 2022, the reading had fallen to 57%, about the level where it has remained since.
The poll showed that support for banning handguns has plummeted significantly.
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.
Interestingly enough, it is Democrats who are responsible for the decline in support for handgun bans, according to Gallup. “The decline in support for a handgun ban this year is largely owed to Democrats, whose backing has fallen by 16 points since 2023 to 33 percent — a new low — after the group showed increasing support for a ban the prior two years,” the report explained.
Predictably, attitudes toward gun control laws fall along partisan lines. About 89 percent of Democrats want stricter gun laws while only 25 percent of Republicans agree.
“Democrats’ backing for tougher gun laws has ranged from 85% to 94% since 2017, while Republicans’ and independents’ have been significantly lower,” the report noted.
In addition to the majority of independents who back stricter gun laws, 31% would like to see them kept the same and 12% support stricter laws. A 59% majority of Republicans favor keeping firearms sales laws as they are now, while 15% prefer less strict laws.
About 52 percent of Americans favor banning so-called assault weapons, which marks a decline from 55 percent in 2022 and 61 percent in 2019.
These findings coincide with other data showing a remarkable increase in the number of first-time gun buyers. In 2020, about 83.4 million Americans purchased firearms for the first time, accounting for about 40 percent of all gun sales that year, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF). These numbers include a rise in female and minority Americans. Women made up about 40 percent of first-time gun owners while Black American gun owners saw a 58 percent increase in 2020 compared to 2019.
This is great news for Second Amendment supporters. It shows that we are winning the debate despite the deluge of anti-gunner propaganda propagated by the media and politicians. Americans are waking up to the reality that their well-being is their responsibility and that they cannot rely on the government to protect them, an issue I discussed in a recent video.
However, the fact that a majority of Americans still support stricter gun control laws shows that we still have more work to do when it comes to changing minds about gun ownership and self-defense. We need more people on the battlefield of ideas explaining why gun ownership is important and why gun control does not work. Still, I would say things are looking good for those who value the Second Amendment.
