American Attitudes About Guns Have Become Much More Positive, But Why? the headline at huffingtonpost.com asks. Rather than turning to someone who knows the truth about guns, the HuffPo let longtime TTAG punching bag Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser have a go at putting the pro-gun numbers into the proper progressive perspective.
After admitting a dramatic shift towards the pro-gun rights position, Mike has this to say about declining support for gun control:
It would be easy to put this shift down to one of two arguments: 1) the country is becoming more conservative; 2) the NRA is doing a great PR job about guns. Unfortunately, both arguments can easily be shot through (pardon the pun) with holes.
The country is becoming so much more conservative over the time-period covered by these surveys that abortion is law of the land, ditto gay marriage even in the most pro-gun states. As for the vaunted NRA noise machine, the percentage of Gallup respondents who always agree with the NRA on gun issues has stayed exactly the same from 1996 to 2012 – a whole, big 6 percent.
Citation/link? Fuhgeddaboutit!
Interesting that Mike TGG can’t think of any other reasons that Americans are embracing their natural, civil and Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms. And turning their back on unconstitutional gun control legislation.
I suspect willful ignorance. Or a failure of will. But wait, there’s more. Here’s his conclusion:
Most people are a lot more afraid of things they believe guns can be used to protect them against – crime, terrorism, danger in a generic sense – I don’t know anyone who can’t tell me exactly where they were and what they were doing on the morning of September 11, 2001.
And as long as we continue to believe that the world has become a more dangerous place, simply giving folks the results of a gun survey won’t persuade them to agree with what the survey says.
Huh? I think Mr. Weisser is saying that telling people that most Americans support gun rights won’t make them support gun control. As Fats Domino sang, as I repeat ironically, ain’t that a shame.