Majority Of Americans Now See Guns As The Solution To Mass Shootings

Obama failed: in the aftermath of the 2012 Newtown, CT school massacre which left 26 unarmed, defenseless people dead, the president pushed as hard as he could to pass legislation that would enact strict gun control and further limit the applicability of the Second Amendment. Not only did he not succeed, but according to a 2014 Pew Research Poll there has been a 9% rise in the number of Americans who think gun ownership could "protect people from becoming victims of crime."

 

Incidentally, this conforms with what former Texas governor Rick Perry, and a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, said after last week's deadly shooting at a Lafayette, La., movie theater when he claimed that Americans should be allowed to bring guns into movie theaters - and everywhere else - to prevent such crime.

It is also a recapitulation of what NRA head Wayne LaPierre has said in the past: "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

According to Pew, the recent shift was driven by republicans who have become even more convinced their outlook is correct: in the two years since the Newtown attack,  rose from 63 percent to 80 percent.

The poll also marked the first time in two decades of Pew surveys that more Americans supported gun rights rather than gun control (though public opinion had been shifting that way for years).

 

Incidentally, WaPo which caught these revelations first, despite its anti-gun bias was largely accurate in its conclusion: the findings "likely won't move the needle on gun debate. Both sides can -- and are -- using these two most recent incidents to argue their points: Gun-control supporters say they prove that the background check system needs to be revamped and expanded, while gun-rights supporters say a slip in the system does not a trend make.

 

It's even clearer that gun laws likely won't change when you zoom out to Americans' overall feelings on guns; with every mass shooting, in fact, we seem to be embracing the idea of more guns rather than fewer.

Which means that the biggest loser is none other than the president, for whom his way of gun-control was one of the key targets, so to say, of his tenure.

It also means that current and future mass shootings will do nothing to change public opinion but merely further solidify beliefs. And while politicians debate who is right or wrong, and for what reason, many more innocent Americans will be, for whatever the reason may be, innocent casualties of what has become a very lethal political war.