Poll: Support For Gun Control Measures Slips

March 26, 2013

Comments

With the Newtown shootings now three months in the past, public support for same-sex marriage seems to be slipping:

Backing for stricter gun control has weakened since the days immediately after the massacre in Newtown, Conn., according to a poll released Tuesday.

Forty-seven percent of Americans said the nation needs stronger gun laws in the latest CBS News poll — a 10-point drop since December, when support was at 57 percent.

But support is still higher than it was in April 2012, before mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and in Newtown, where the murders occurred on Dec. 14. Then, only 39 percent wanted stricter gun laws.

Other polls have found stronger support for specific gun control measures, with more than 80 percent of Americans backing universal background checks and a majority supporting a ban on assault weapons.

Of course, as I’ve noted before, the only restriction likely to pass Congress is background checks and even that’s not a safe bet.

4 responses to “Poll: Support For Gun Control Measures Slips”

Christopher Bowen

March 26, 2013 at 9:01 am

Your thoughts are getting crossed up; you state in the article that in the wake of Newtown, support for *same sex marriage* is dissipating. 😉
JKB

March 26, 2013 at 9:58 am

Yeah, those polls are starting to look like the petard some in Congress are going to be hoisted on.
Gold Star for Robot Boy

March 26, 2013 at 10:59 am

Incremental change is happening. No one expected an assault-weapons ban in 2013.
stonetools

March 26, 2013 at 1:36 pm

Sigh.
That the public’s attention would shioft and move on to other things could have been easily predicted on December 15., which leads me to wonder how on earth the Administration missed it. Obama is a good and kindly man, but what he is not is a shrewd legislator. “Strike while the iron is hot” is an adage he seems not to have heard of . The time to pass legislation was right after Newton, when public attention was highest and public revulsion at the carnage was greatest. Instead, he waited, ( what for, I wonder?) giving time for public passions to cool and for the opposition to organize. It”s a mistake he makes time and time again, and I’m frankly tired of his Charlie Brown approach to law-making.
Of course, the Republicans are most to blame for the coming legislative clusterf#%k on gun law reform, but Obama hasn’t made it easy on himself. By delaying and not putting points on the board immediately, he now risks not putting points on the board at all. And so the children of Newton would have had their brains blown out and their bodies shredded by bullets in vain.