Gun-rights issues continue to polarize America
Associated Press
In the midst of debate over the latest mass shooting, in Orlando, it’s easy to imagine that guns have always divided us this way. But a close look at survey data over decades shows they haven’t.
There was a time, not that long ago, when most citizens favored banning handguns, the chief gun lobbyists supported firearm restrictions, and courts hadn’t yet interpreted the Second Amendment as guaranteeing a personal right to bear arms for self-defense at home.
Today, in a country of hundreds of millions of guns, public opinion and interpretation of the law have shifted so much that outright gun bans are unthinkable. It’s true that large segments of the public have expressed support for some aspects of gun regulation — but when Americans have been asked to say which is more important, gun control or gun rights, they trend toward the latter.
That shift has come, perhaps surprisingly, as fewer Americans today choose to keep a gun in their home. The General Social Survey, a massive study undertaken by NORC at the University of Chicago since 1972 and one of the foremost authorities on gun ownership, found 31 percent of households had guns in 2014. That was down from a high of 50.4 percent in 1977.
“Institutions have repeated, ‘More guns, less crime. More guns, less crime,’ over and over again for almost 40 years, and it’s hard to turn that belief around in any easy way,” said Joan Burbick, an emeritus professor at Washington State University who wrote “Gun Show Nation: Gun Culture and American Democracy” and who owns a gun for hobby shooting.
Among the longest-existing measures of public gun sentiment is a Gallup poll question asking whether there should be a law banning handguns except by police and other authorized people. When it was first asked, in July 1959, 60 percent of respondents approved of such a measure.
By last October, only 27 percent agreed.
Many point to a single date as crucial in the societal shift: May 21, 1977, when the National Rifle Association held its annual meeting at a convention hall in Cincinnati.
“That was the moment, in one evening, when the gun debate in America radically changed,” said Winkler.
The turmoil of the country in the 1960s and 1970s roiled institutions of all kinds, the NRA included. The organization had fought gun laws in the past, but also had come to accept some, including the Gun Control Act of 1968. As the next decade wore on and the NRA entered its second century, it faced an identity crisis: Was it a coalition of sportsmen, or a political powerhouse?
Leaders were set on the former, drawing up plans to move its headquarters from Washington to Colorado and to retreat from politics. Some of its most fiery members disagreed, staging a revolt that night that stretched into the next morning, and remade the group’s leadership. Plans for a westward move were scuttled, and a rightward move politically was sealed.
The gun lobby’s increasingly powerful voice found receptive ears among a public that witnessed the country’s civil rights battles, assassinations of beloved leaders and growing lawlessness in cities. Over time, statehouses and Congress bowed to the influence of the NRA and its allies. And in 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared Americans have the right to a gun for self-defense.
“What they (gun rights advocates) did is a classic example of how you make constitutional change: They realized they needed to win in the court of public opinion before you could win in the court of law,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and author of “The Second Amendment: A Biography.”
Pew Research Center data provides a sketch of what the gun-owning populace looks like today:
—74 percent of gun owners are men and 82 percent are white.
—Those in rural areas are more than twice as likely as urbanites to own a gun.
—Ownership rates in the Northeast are lower than in the rest of the country.
—Gun owners are far more likely to identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.
Data from GSS shows gun owners are more likely to have higher incomes — and to vote.
Taken together, this is a description of a motivated and politically potent group. But their clout sometimes obscures a simple fact: Though polarization appears in broad questions on gun rights, far more consensus emerges on individual proposals.
A Pew poll released in August showed 85 percent of people support background checks for purchases at gun shows and in private sales; 79 percent support laws to prevent the mentally ill from buying guns; 70 percent approve of a federal database to track gun sales; and 57 percent favor a ban on assault weapons.