Democrats and Republicans: Gun Right LET'S TAKE A LOOK

Let’s take a look at this this in reverse order.

Gun control is not a strongly partisan issue along Democrat/Republican lines. On most gun control issues Democrats are around 10 points more likely to favor control, say 65% to 55%. The national Democratic party generally favors gun control, but it rarely passes legislation, and that legislation is mostly cosmetic, so it’s not a real priority. The national Republican party usually does not support gun control measures but sometimes does. And individual Democratic and Republican candidates hew to the views of their local voters, not to the national party line.

The people who get angry about gun control laws are gun rights supporters. Many are Democrats, more are Republicans and most are not happy with either political party and either don’t vote, vote third-party or vote against the worse of the two candidates on the ballot rather than voting for anyone.

No one seriously believes popular gun control proposals will save lives. The hope of sensible gun control proponents is to gradually change the gun culture, the way culture changed against smoking. Taxes, government harassment, social shaming and other discouragements might reduce gun ownership, and with-it political opposition to confiscation and outlawing civilian ownership of firearms. In a couple of generations, the US might have a gun culture similar to Canada—and gun control proponents hope—Canadian violent crime rates.

The anger gun rights supporters feel comes from two sources. First is the disregarding of the people’s right to keep and bear arms. Regardless of consequences, a right is a right. Second is they know from experience that any “common sense” is only in the legislation title and preamble, the operative rules will be administered to inflict maximum inconvenience on civilian gun owners.