PA Bill Number: HB917
Title: Adopting the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act.
Description: Adopting the Uniform Family Law Arbitration Act. ...
Last Action: Presented to the Governor
Last Action Date: Apr 29, 2024
Pew Research Center poll shows most Americans take gun rights over control :: 04/20/2015
For the first time since the Pew Research Center began asking more than 25 years ago, more than half of Americans say the protection of gun rights trumps the need for gun control.
Why Americans changed their minds is unclear: Personal freedom, or skewed perceptions of crime?
For some gun rights advocates, the reason doesn't matter.
“The Second Amendment is not determined by public opinion,” said Kim Stolfer, chairman of Pennsylvania's Firearms Owners Against Crime. “Even if 90 percent are for gun control — sorry, you can't take it away. We don't have rights by public opinion. That's why we have a Bill of Rights.”
The shift appeared in December, two years after President Obama's push for gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting fell flat in Congress.
Though support for gun control hit a high of 66 percent in 1999, by December it had fallen to 46 percent, Pew found. The number of Americans who say protecting gun rights is the more important priority rose to 52 percent.
But such surveys can be misleading, says Erika Soto Lamb, communications director for Everytown for Gun Safety, a nonprofit advocating for gun laws at all levels of government.
“It sets up questions that have been used for years,” she said. “It presents a false choice between gun rights and so-called gun control. It's set up so you can't be for the Second Amendment and also for public safety measures that keep guns out of dangerous hands.”
According to the study's authors: “(W)e are at a moment when most Americans believe crime rates are rising and when most believe gun ownership — not gun control — makes people safer.”
Stolfer agreed.“Many people are realizing that this 50-year experiment on gun control has been a complete and utter failure,” he said. His criticism was of the Gun Control Act of 1968 that regulated the firearms industry.
“The average person is realizing they've been sold a bill of goods and they have to look out for themselves,” he said. “I just think that public opinion is finally catching up with what's been known all along.”
The Pew study cites another factor: The perception of crime.
The researchers said the 1990s showed a correlation between crime and the perception of crime. When violent crime dramatically dropped by 50 percent that decade, so did the perception of crime.
In the 2000s, however, that correlation stopped, and by 2014, 63 percent of Americans said crime was on the rise, despite steadily low numbers.
“If you watch the news, crime is reported just as much and seems just as bad, whether it's rising or falling,” said Norman Conti, associate professor of sociology at Duquesne University. He said news coverage not only affects public opinion, it defines it.
“People see this stuff and they tend to believe it,” he said. “The average person in Pittsburgh, all they really know about crime comes from the media.”
According to the Pew study, of those who say crime is on the rise, 45 percent want stricter gun laws.
Gun rights advocates don't find the numbers surprising.
“Freedom is something that never goes out of style,” said Brad Todd, a Republican media strategist in Washington who runs On Message. “While it has become fashionable for celebrities and liberal politicians to oppose the Second Amendment, regular Americans have never jumped on that bandwagon.”
Todd said the crime rate has little to do with why individuals buy guns — even if their reason is self- or home-defense. He said Obama's “persistent threat to Second Amendment freedom” could be driving public opinion.
“A lot (of people) who thought maybe one day they would buy a gun concluded maybe they need to buy one right now, before President Obama outlaws it,” Todd said. “His policies pose a clear and present threat (to gun owners), and regular Americans have understood that.”
Lamb, with Everytown for Gun Safety, said she can't comment on specific legislation, but noted: “We haven't taken our eye off Washington, but we've made significant progress in passing state laws that will keep guns out of dangerous hands — and that should not be discounted.”
When asked for comment, the White House offered the following quote President Obama made January 2013 before he signed executive orders intended to reduce gun violence: “Let me be absolutely clear. Like most Americans, I believe the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms. I respect our strong tradition of gun ownership and the rights of hunters and sportsmen. There are millions of responsible, law-abiding gun owners in America who cherish their right to bear arms for hunting, or sport, or protection, or collection.”
Megan Guza is a Trib Total Media staff writer.
http://triblive.com/news/allegheny/8208483-74/gun-crime-rights#axzz3Y0UNN2uS
