Mark Blumenthal at the Huffington Post has a good article (with lots of charts and graphs) showing the history of the support for various aspects of gun control, in the period leading up to Tucson. None of the data reflects the post-Tucson reaction. Blumenthal:
Will the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 20 others in Arizona turn public opinion in favor of tougher gun control measures? The evidence is mixed at best. While public opinion has generally turned against stricter gun-control measures over the last twenty years, majorities continue to support greater restrictions on the sort of semi-automatic weapon used in the Tucson shootings.The chart that goes with that statement is this one. Note the steady decline in the dark green "More strict" line:
For the last 20 years, the Gallup organization has tracked whether Americans "feel that the laws covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict or kept as they are now." As Gallup explained in a report last November, that support has declined gradually over the last two decades to the point that a "record low 44%" now support stricter gun laws, while a majority prefer laws that are kept as they are currently (42%) or made less strict (12%).
On the other hand: [M]ajorities still favor bans on the sort of semi-automatic gun allegedly used by Jared Lee Loughner in Arizona. The precise number depends on the wording of the question (and possibly on timing). But, as the following table shows, three organizations have found majority or plurality support for bans on semi-automatic weapons in recent years.And this is worth your time:
The top (NBC News) line shows declining, but still (mostly) majority support for the ban.
I found the last two lines, the two ABC News samples, revealing (though of what I'm not sure). Note that they were taken with the same sample size at the same time. The only apparent difference is in the addition of an explanation. That explanation reduced support for a ban on assault weapons by 12 points.
Did the explanation lessen the force of the phrase "assault weapons"? If so, it's a lesson for you nascent "perception is reality" PR & MBA freaks out there. Stay in school. [Update: One commenter noted that the phrase per se doesn't appear in both questions, just the concept. Fair point.]
As Blumenthal says, it will be interesting to see how Tucson changes these numbers.
One contributing factor in any change of public opinion may be whether Democrats choose to advocate for specific new gun control measures. Without prominent leaders pushing for a change, it is hard to imagine a reversal of this decades long trend.Leadership we can believe in. For what it's worth, here's your polling baseline.
GP
