A new Gallup Poll finds support for gun control is now literally surging:
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Conn., Gallup finds 58% of Americans in favor of strengthening the laws covering the sale of firearms, up from 43% in 2011. Current support for stricter gun laws is the highest Gallup has measured since January 2004, but still not nearly as high as it was in the 1990s.
These results are from a USA Today/Gallup poll conducted Dec. 19-22, just days after the Newtown tragedy. Gallup’s prior measure of Americans’ attitudes toward new gun laws was conducted in October 2011. Since then, there have been several other mass shootings in the U.S., including one in July at a Colorado movie theater that left 12 dead and more than 50 wounded. More recently, a gunman killed his boss and four others at a factory in Minneapolis in September, and in August a U.S. Army veteran opened fire in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, killing six.
And there’s more:
Perhaps as a result of these events, the new poll also finds that a record-high 47% of Americans favor passing new gun laws, up from 35% in 2011. Since Gallup first asked this question in 2000, majorities have consistently preferred enforcing the current laws more strictly without passing new laws.
Of course, the big push now is against assault rifles and the murder of virtual babies and adult educators in Newtown, Conn., and the murder of two firemen in New York — all the murders committed by the same kind of assault rifle.
Two aspects of the Newtown shooting that have been a focal point of recent discussions about gun laws are the semi-automatic rifle and high-capacity ammunition magazines used by the shooter. Several state and federal lawmakers have already announced that they will seek to ban both from the commercial market.
Nevertheless, Americans’ views on the sale of assault rifles are unchanged. The slight majority, 51%, remain opposed to making it illegal to manufacture, sell, or possess semi-automatic guns known as assault rifles.
And magazines?
A significantly higher percentage of Americans — 62% — do favor banning the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines, generally defined as those that contain more than 10 rounds.
And checks on people buying guns — something the NRA and the politicos who they support and seemingly intimidate have opposed?
Also, nearly all Americans — now 92%, up from 83% in 1999 — favor laws that require people attempting to purchase guns at gun shows, including gun dealers, to undergo background checks.
What does this mean? Apart from what this says about gun control, the larger implication of this is that Congressional Republicans in particular who have either remained largely mum or parrot NRA talking points are in danger of FURTHER marginalizing the Republican Party from mainstream America.
If some kind of bill passes in the Senate and goes to the House and fails, the GOP will put itself (again) on the side not favored by most Americans and growing demographics. And if GOPers in the Senate filibuster it, they will as well.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.