Reply #67: I hate to cite the Post (I really, really do) but they just had a rundown

[depakid]

Let's Parse the Polls!

Scan recent surveys that touch on guns and gun control and you realize quickly that it has not been a matter of political debate in quite some time. Last fall, a question on gun control was included in an October Post/ABC News survey.

The sample was asked whether they favored or opposed "stricter gun laws." Sixty-one percent said they favored tighter restrictions while 37 percent opposed more stringent regulations.

Not surprisingly, Democrats were generally more supportive of more gun restrictions than Republicans. Seventy-three percent of Democrats favored stricter laws, compared with 52 percent of Republicans who said the same; 56 percent of independents supported tighter strictures.

The same trend was seen when voters were differentiated by ideology. Seventy-one percent of liberals backed stricter gun laws, followed by 61 percent of moderates and 55 percent of conservatives.

It's interesting to note that the Post/ABC poll was in the field shortly after the the shooting at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania -- the third fatal school shooting in a week's time. Events like the Amish school shooting or even Columbine incident -- i.e. ones that managed to make gun violence in schools a part of the daily debate for several years -- don't have any long-term impact on Americans' overall beliefs about gun laws.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2007/04/parsing_the_polls_gun_control.html

The bottom is that the issue is emotionally charged. Reasoning has been short-circuited by phenomena known variously as "cognitive dissonance," "hypothesis locking" and confirmation bias.

Sad really- as the results of Australia's actions back in the 90's plainly show:

Gun deaths in rapid decline since buyback
December 14, 2006

THE risk of dying by gunshot has dropped dramatically since the gun buyback scheme was introduced after the Port Arthur massacre in 1996, a new report says.

Dr Philip Alpers, a University of Sydney academic who helped write the report, said the buyback saw the number of gun deaths a year fall from an average of 521 to 289, "suggesting that the removal of more than 700,000 guns was associated with a faster declining rate of gun suicide and gun homicide".

The Prime Minister, John Howard, introduced some of the world's toughest gun laws after the massacre, calling on people to surrender semi-automatic's, which reload each time the trigger is pulled, and pump-action shotguns.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gun-deaths-in-rapid-decline-since-buyback/2006/12/13/1165685752421.html