NRA-ILA Ponders Reason for Waning Gun Control Interest

Interest in gun control isn’t what it used to be. That’s fantastic news, obviously. The less vigorously we have to fight to defend our rights is more time, energy, and money we have that can be applied to rolling back anti-gun laws that have plagued this country for far too long. Yes, I’m looking at you, NFA.

The thing is, we need to understand why that’s happening. If it’s something that can be replicated or, at a minimum, maintained, then it would behoove us to do so.

The trick is identifying it.

Over at the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Affairs, they have thoughts.

Perhaps this juxtaposition of decreasing crime and increasing firearms freedom, which exists athwart an endless stream of anti-gun propaganda, is why recent polling has shown a waning interest in gun control among the American public.

Each month Gallup asks Americans “What do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?” For the last seven months “Guns/Gun control” has registered between 0.0-0.5%.

This election season, Pew Research Center asked voters what issues are important to their vote for Congress. In this poll, voters could choose multiple answers and the results were broken down by party preference. Compared with the same poll conducted in 2022, the number of Democrat voters who listed “gun policy” as very important dropped 22%. Notably, the significance of gun policy to Republican voting intentions is almost unchanged.

This waning interest in gun control among the electorate is encouraging news, but gun owners shouldn’t lose their edge. As evidenced by the efforts of gun control financiers like billionaire Michael Bloomberg, much of gun control advocacy is a top-down campaign against freedom. Gun rights supporters shouldn’t equate a welcome disinterest in gun control from the electorate with a disinterest among the elite who fund gun control politics.

Let’s be real, the drop in the crime rate alone is enough to make people back off on gun control. The electorate is fickle, after all, and so as the crime rate drops, so too does any ability to sell gun control to the masses who only care about news reports of people being shot.

Couple that with the doom-and-gloom predicted following Bruen, only to see the opposite happen — the same thing we said would happen, by the by — and it became an even bigger fiasco for anti-gunners.

However, the admonition to not lose our edge is warranted. At the top of this piece, I mentioned fighting less vigorously, and if we do that at the wrong time, we’ve got a problem. The public has lost interest in gun control, but Big Gun Control hasn’t lost interest in the public. 

When taken with the fact that anti-gunners pretty much run the media, they have ample opportunity to change those minds back, and the fickle nature of that electorate I mentioned previously is little more than a cranny with which anti-gunners can lever them into dancing the same dance again.

So, we fight no matter what.

I still would just love to spend the rest of my life on offense instead of defense.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

Help us continue to report on their efforts and legislative successes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.

Editor’s Note: President Trump and Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to protect our Second Amendment rights and right to self-defense.

Help us continue to report on their efforts and legislative successes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.