BELLEVUE, WA – A new Gallup poll that shows dramatically declining support for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” is proof that more Americans are waking up to the fact that gun bans and restrictive control in general are not the solutions to violent crime, the Second Amendment Foundation said today.
“While extremist anti-gunners in Washington, D.C. push their agenda of public disarmament, this new poll shows that support for the right to keep and bear arms stretches across party lines all over the country,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “Some people may think gun control is an issue that will carry them into the White House, but out here where common sense prevails, the idea of banning guns only puts people in the dog house.”
According to Gallup, only 36 percent of the people support a ban on “assault weapons,” where 44 percent backed the idea in 2012 and 57 percent liked the idea back in 1996. Gottlieb said the past 20 years have allowed Second Amendment organizations to educate the public, and many political leaders, about the false promise of restrictive gun control and outright bans.
“Taking perfectly legal firearms away from law-abiding citizens does nothing to discourage criminals from committing crimes with guns they obtain illegally,” Gottlieb explained. “Demonizing honest citizens who have harmed nobody by blaming their guns for crimes they didn’t commit does not pass the smell test, and the new Gallup results show that an increasing number of Americans have wised up to that.”
Gottlieb was disappointed, though not surprised, that more Democrats than Republicans still favor a ban. But he is encouraged because the poll results suggest that efforts by gun rights organizations to educate the public about Second Amendment issues and the futility of gun bans are working.
“The more people understand that banning guns for law-abiding citizens will not prevent criminals from breaking the law, the less time we will waste on fighting over gun rights and the more time we can spend on finding sensible solutions to lowering the violent crime rates,” Gottlieb concluded.