National Review - October 30, 2017

17

“easy access to guns” is a major factor

in mass shootings.

At the same time, public support for a

ban on the civilian ownership of hand-

guns has been falling for decades. In

1959, 60 percent of the public favored

the idea and 36 percent opposed it. By

1975, support had fallen to 41 percent

and opposition risen to 55. Now there’s

a 76–23 percent supermajority against

the idea.

If this change in public opinion re -

flects increased anxiety about mas-

culinity, or economic shifts, it is odd

that there has been no corresponding

increase in the percentage of Americans

who own guns. Since 1959, the percent-

age of Americans who tell Gallup they

own a gun has dropped from 49 to 39.

Other poll results may get us closer

to an answer. Gallup also asked its

respondents whether they thought the

background checks, which they nearly

uniformly supported, would make a

difference for mass shootings. Fifty-

three percent said it would make little

difference or no difference at all. In

2013, Gallup asked about school

shootings: Should Congress focus

more on changing gun laws or on

improving school security procedures

and the mental-health system? Sixty-

five percent gave the latter answer, 30

the former.

Gallup’s peers have found similar

results. Quinnipiac found majority sup-

port last year for a ban on assault

weapons—other pollsters haven’t—but

also found that a plurality didn’t think

it would do much to reduce gun vio-

lence. A CBS/New York Times poll

found that 26 percent of the public, a

minority not much larger than the one

that wants to ban handguns, thinks that

“stricter gun control” would “help a lot”

to stop gun violence.

Here then is another theory. Over the

last 60 years public confidence in gov-

ernment has declined. Most people do

not believe that it would be sensible for

the government to try to disarm the pop-

ulation, no doubt in part because of the

immensity of the task and the resistance

it would spark. (The number of guns in

circulation in the U.S. is generally esti-

mated to top 300 million.)

They favor a lot of less sweeping

measures to regulate guns, but they do

not attach great urgency to these mea-

sures because they doubt they would do

much good. That view, incidentally,

lines up with the data about the effects

of gun regulations, as even some of

their advocates admit. Boot, for exam-

ple, concedes that any positive effect of

the assault-weapons ban on homicides

was undetectable.

And because they have a rational

basis for not seeing the gun regulations

as important, these ambivalent voters

let other issues determine which candi-

dates to back. Pro-gun voters thus have

political influence over gun policy dis-

proportionate to their numbers.

The evidence we have from polls and

politicians’ behavior does not, admit-

tedly, prove this theory. But it is at least

compatible with that evidence, unlike

the prevailing punditry.

The theory also leaves open a question

about the thinking of a third group,

besides the gun-rights enthusiasts and the

ambivalent general public. What moti-

vates the passionate gun-controllers? If

saving lives is the goal, then directing

more police resources to high-crime

areas might have a bigger impact than

any push for gun control, as Robert

VerBruggen discusses elsewhere in this

issue. So might public attention to sui-

cide among the elderly, as statistician

Leah Libresco recently concluded in

the Washington Postafter reviewing

the literature on gun policies.

Liberals pride themselves these days

on their empiricism, yet policies such as

these do not seem to excite their interest

as much as a campaign against guns.

Sykes wrote that the “N.R.A. has suc-

cessfully taken the issue of rational gun

regulation out of the policy realm and

made it a central feature of the culture

wars.” Perhaps this has not been the

achievement of the NRA alone.

Public support for a ban on the civilian

ownership of handguns has been

falling for decades.

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