By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
Buried deep in a Thursday article in The Guardian is a quick reference to a Pew Research Center survey from 2024 showing at least one-third of U.S. adults live in a home where there are one or more firearms, which a more recent Gallup survey indicates has actually expanded.
According to Gallup, “A steady 43% of Americans report that there is a gun in their household, including 31% who say they personally own a firearm and 12% who say another household member is the gun owner.” The Gallup report also notes, “Republicans (47%) are more than twice as likely as Democrats (20%) to personally own a gun, with independents (29%) falling between the two.”
The Guardian report discussed possible outreach to Democrat gun owners, in an effort to “court Democrats and convince them to remove gun control as a central piece of the party’s agenda.”
That goal may have just become farther from achieving, with Democrats introducing a slew of gun control bill proposals in Texas, where they just gained control of the state House of Representatives, and the governor’s office. Likewise, Governor-elect Amy Klobuchar acknowledged she wants to ban so-called “assault weapons” in Minnesota.
Couple that with the fact that virtually all gun control legislation introduced in Congress and state legislatures in recent memory was sponsored by Democrats, and there is an immediate credibility gap when anyone with a “D” beside his/her name insists they “support the Second Amendment,” especially when that comment is immediately followed by the word, “but.”
Gun rights activists say this where the line of trust is typically drawn.
The two-year-old Pew Research poll noted how 86% of Democrats “say it is too easy to obtain a gun legally,” while only 34 percent of Republicans said the same thing.
This week’s Gallup poll reported, “Unlike Republicans and independents, Democrats have maintained consistently high support for stricter gun laws in recent years. Eighty-nine percent now favor making gun laws more strict, similar to readings since 2017, when support first reached 90%. Before then, support generally ranged from about six in 10 to eight in 10 Democrats. Just 9% now favor keeping gun laws unchanged, while 1% want them made less strict.”
Back in August of this year, Rasmussen Reports posted results from its survey—taken Aug. 13 and 16-17 from among 1,087 likely voters—showing support for gun control has declined.
Yet, this poll also revealed a whopping 79 percent of Democrats “think the United States needs stricter gun control laws.” Only 29 percent of Republicans agreed, along with 44 percent of Independents. Another startling revelation was that 65 percent of Democrats said they would vote “for a congressional candidate who promised to completely ban semi-automatic and assault type weapons” while only 30 percent of Republicans and 43 percent of “unaffiliated voters” would do likewise.
The challenge of outreach has become one of monumental proportions in this sort of political/philosophical environment. It might be comparable to trying to wash the stripes off a zebra, and the next two years could underscore how difficult it will be to bridge the gap.
