Fox News conducted a poll in recent days that indicates some interesting trends among the American people. According to their poll, while 71% of people believe that new gun laws wouldn’t stop events like Sandy Hook, there is still some pretty strong support for increased gun control measures. According to the poll . . .
- Require background check for all gun sales: 91%
- Improve enforcement of existing laws: 86%
- Require mental health check for gun purchases: 83%
- Background check for ammo and components: 80%
- High cap mag ban: 56%
- Assault weapons ban: 54%
- Restrict access to violent video games: 52%
So in other words, it looks like the vast and overwhelming majority of people favor some increased scrutiny prior to purchasing a gun. But not necessarily any restrictions on what kinds of guns you can buy. And those who want to restrict the kinds of guns you can buy also don’t seem to recognize the whole First Amendment protection for video games.
I know, it sounds pretty bad for gun owners at first blush. But that first bullet point (background checks on all sales) is pretty hard to do on a federal level, so it will be up to the states to try and implement something on their own. Enforcement of existing laws is pretty much what we’d expect — no real surprises there. And the third one, about mental health checks, might be satisfied by simply expanding the NICS system to include some mental health records that haven’t, until now, been submitted by the states.
Still concerning and infringing on the second amendment a bit, but it looks like the masses can indeed be mostly appeased by some minor changes without going for the nuclear option.
The background checks on ammunition sales is the only bit that actually concerns me. No one seems to remember that the United States had such a system in place before, and it did exactly squat to stop “gun violence” or have any impact on crime. It just cost a lot of money for both the government and private citizens and wasted people’s time.