Support for gun rights grows

Reversing the trends of the last few decades, a majority of Americans (52%) now say that protecting the right to own a firearm is more important than controlling gun ownership.  The question now is why that is.

From Andrew Kohut, Despite lower crime rates, support for gun rights increases | Pew Research Center:

For most of the 1990s and the subsequent decade, a substantial majority of Americans believed it was more important to control gun ownership than to protect gun owners’ rights. But in December 2014, the balance of opinion flipped: For the first time, more Americans say that protecting gun rights is more important than controlling gun ownership, 52% to 46%.

Why has public opinion shifted about gun control? As my colleagues at Pew Research Center have documented elsewhere, some of this is related to politics, as Republicans have become far more supportive of gun rights during the Obama years. The rise in support for gun rights has also spanned many other regional and demographic groups.

But there may be another factor behind this shift: Americans’ changing perceptions about crime. Over the past 25 years or so, there has been a divergence between American perceptions about crime and actual crime rates. And those who worried about crime had favored stricter gun control; now, they tend to desire keeping the laws as they are or loosening gun control. In short, we are at a moment when most Americans believe crime rates are rising and when most believe gun ownership – not gun control – makes people safer.

The survey is from a year ago, but this particular study of that data says that the reason for this surge of support for the Second Amendment is that a majority of Americans believe the crime rate is rising, even though, in fact, it is going down.   But is that really the reason?