Less and less public support for more restrictive gun laws

The Houston Chronicle has more bad news for Paul Helmke and the forcible citizen disarmament lobbyists.

Amid a wave of publicity about drug-related gun violence along the Mexican border and police killings in U.S. cities, more Americans than ever oppose new government efforts to regulate guns.

Recent polls show shrinking support for new gun control measures and strong public sentiment for enforcing existing laws instead. So strong is the shift in public opinion that a proposed assault-weapons ban — once backed by three in four Americans — now rates barely one in two.

Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, told reporters Tuesday that “every bit of data is showing us that Americans are getting more conservative about gun control.”

A CNN poll conducted in April found that 39 percent of Americans wanted stricter gun control laws, down from 50 percent in 2000. Another 46 percent said the gun laws should stay as they are, while 15 percent said they should be loosened — up from 9 percent in 2000.

This is just the sort of thing the Brady Campaign doesn't want to hear (and more importantly, doesn't want anyone else to hear), as can be seen in Helmke's complaint about the Gallup Poll survey showing declining support for new gun laws (my emphasis).

What Gallup should do in the future is try to replicate the polling results of other surveys that examine Americans' attitudes toward the wide variety of gun violence prevention policies that, in the words of Justice Antonin Scalia, are "presumptively lawful" after the Supreme Court's decision, while gauging the desire of Americans to see those proposals enacted into law.

As I pointed out, a scientific poll doesn't try to "replicate the results" that someone's agenda dictates--but Helmke clearly wasn't interested in science.

Since then, the news has just gotten worse for Helmke, with a CNN poll--taken after the shootings that Helmke thought (hoped?) would prompt numbers more to his liking--showing an even more marked decline in support for more draconian gun legislation, a Pew Research poll showing the same trend, and now the Houston Chronicle article.

Worse yet for Helmke and pals: politicians are reading about this, too.

Rep. John Culberson, R-Houston, called diminished public support for gun control measures “a good thing.” He said the recent poll findings would help lawmakers “resist pressure from this administration to pass more gun control legislation.”

Does the truth hurt, Paul?