Zogby: Gun Control Won't Prevent Tragedy

NewsMax ^ | April 20, 2007

[2ndDivisionVet]

Most Americans don't believe that stricter U.S. gun control policies would help prevent tragedies such as this week's shootings at Virginia Tech, a new MSN-Zogby poll shows.

While 59 percent don't think stricter gun control policies would help, 36 percent believe they could make a difference by helping to prevent future shootings.

More than two in three Americans (69 percent) believe the recent shootings at Virginia Tech were the actions of a deranged man determined to inflict mayhem and could not have been prevented. But 16 percent believe stricter controls of guns and ammunition would have prevented the tragedy.

The interactive survey of 1,336 adults nationwide was conducted April 17-18 with a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points. Younger adults are more likely than older adults to see stricter gun policies as a means of preventing shootings: among those 18 to 29 years of age, 39 percent say more stringent gun control could avert tragic shootings, compared to 26 percent of those age 65 and older.

But more than half (53 percent) of those age 18 to 29 say increased gun control won't help, a stance that becomes increasingly prevalent as adults get older. Nearly three in four (72 percent) of those age 65 and older don't think tighter gun control policies will prevent shootings.

Even if more people were allowed to carry guns for protection, 54 percent of Americans don't believe it would help prevent tragedies such as the mass shooting at Virginia Tech, the poll shows. But overall, 38 percent believe more armed Americans could prevent future tragedies.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Funny how no one ever mentions that Mr. Zogby is an "Arab-American" when these come out. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it does tend to give some of his poll questions a proper context, IMHO.

[Badeye]

I’m seeing similiar numbers in local news phone polls. Its heartening. Even if its not ‘scientific’.

I believe 9/11 dramatically changed the public’s view of the Second Amendment. Thats what happens when you are fighting people that don’t believe there is such a thing as ‘civilians’ only ‘targets of opportunity’.

[muawiyah]

Still, that's a full 36% of the population who continue to believe in "magical thinking".

We need some new drugs or something to solve that problem.

[lilylangtree]

Didn’t know that Zogby was Arab. Interesting.

[Badeye]

“Still, that’s a full 36% of the population who continue to believe in “magical thinking”.
We need some new drugs or something to solve that problem.”

Hmmmm. I vote for ‘something’

[Erik Latranyi]

Still, that's a full 36% of the population who continue to believe in "magical thinking".

That 36% is the automatic Democrat vote every election cycle.

[Let's Roll]

I always keep his ethnicity in mind when I participate in his polls.

[rellimpank]

—interestingly enough, the anti-gunners were somewhat active in the late thirties, pushing for state uniform firearms purchase restrictions, etc.,—Pearl Harbor put a stop to that—

[knightshadow]

‘Still, that’s a full 36% of the population who continue to believe in “magical thinking”. ‘

Excerpt from Ann Coulter today:

“Only one policy has ever been shown to deter mass murder: concealed-carry laws. In a comprehensive study of all public, multiple-shooting incidents in America between 1977 and 1999, the inestimable economists John Lott and Bill Landes found that concealed-carry laws were the only laws that had any beneficial effect.

And the effect was not insignificant. States that allowed citizens to carry concealed handguns reduced multiple-shooting attacks by 60 percent and reduced the death and injury from these attacks by nearly 80 percent.

Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can’t shoot back. The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic ‘Gun-Free School Zone’ laws. “

Now, all of that should be obvious, but delusional liberals still don’t get it - and blood is on their hands.

[ElkGroveDan]

But 16 percent believe stricter controls of guns and ammunition would have prevented the tragedy.

Interestingly 16 percent of Americans also "speculate that secretly planted explosives, not burning passenger jets, were the real reason the massive twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed" http://www.izzit.org/events/article3.php?ID=11

and 16 percent are "suspicious about the outcome" of the 2004 Presidential elections. http://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/viewnews.php?id=27589

[lilylangtree]

Now that I know he’s Arab (more than likely islamic), I will too.

[rock_lobsta]

He’s a liberal demonrat, and an huffpo blogger.

Islamic, however, he is not. He’s Christian. Not a very good one, apparently.

[2ndDivisionVet]

I never said he was a Muslim, but he is an Arab, is he not?

[The Pack Knight]

Somewhat buried is that slightly more Americans believe a better-armed citizenry could prevent mass murders than believe stricter gun control would work.

Still, it's good to see some sanity in the public on this issue. I actually believe that on many issues, particularly gun control and immigration, the American public at large leans to the right. At the risk of making this a Rudy flamefest, I do think it highlights how Giuliani might be moderate on the wrong issues to make him more "electable". After all, many of the new Democrats elected to Congress, like their poster boy Jim Webb, ran as being anti-gun control and at least moderate, if not pro-enforcement, on illegal immigration. Webb, at least, appears to be in line with McCain on those issues, and to the right of Giuliani.

Polls like this, and another Zogby poll from late '05 (ZOGBY POLL SHOWS AMERICANS FAVOR BORDER CONTROL OVER GUN CONTROL, minutemanhq.com), suggest that independents and swing voters, just the sort a moderate-to-liberal Republican nominee is supposed to appeal to, is more in line with the Republican base than with the the Republican frontrunners on these key issues.

If our nominee touts his support for the war as his primary conservative credential, he will be emphasizing perhaps the least popular conservative position right now. I yield to no one in my support for victory in Iraq and elsewhere, but I'm politically aware enough to know I'm in the minority in America right now. While I believe that most of the pro-Rudy contingent is well meaning in wanting the best chance to elect a Republican, I believe they've taken a wrongheaded approach in promoting a candidate who bases his claim to the conservative label on those issues on which the public at large identifies with conservatives the least, while leaning to the left on issues where the public would actually be more sympathetic to the conservative position.

Just a thought.

[rock_lobsta]

Indeed... Lebanese.

[The Pack Knight]

He is Arab, of Lebanese Catholic extraction, specifically, and his brother James is the founder of the Arab American Institute. While John tends to avoid political advocacy in order to protect the appearance of objectivity for his polling activities, James Zogby is a major Democrat and pro-Palestinian activist.

[Let's Roll]

The Zogby brothers, John and James, head up the Zogby poll and CAIR - the Council on American-Islamic Relations. You know the group that squeals like a stuck pig at the most innocuous action on the part of Americans. They of course see whatever it is as an “outrage”.

Like most of these special interest groups based on race or belief, if there isn’t a problem, they gin one up.

Can’t remember which brother is in charge of which.

[PsyOp]

"The tank, the B-52, the fighter-bomber, the state controlled police and the military are the weapons of dictatorship. The rifle is the weapon of democracy. Not for nothing was the revolver called an "equalizer." Egalite implies liberte. And always will. Let us hope our weapons are never needed--but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny... If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government--and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws." - Edward Abbey, The Right to Bear Arms, 1979.

The Second Amendment - Commentaries

[techcor]

But 16 percent believe stricter controls of guns and ammunition would have prevented the tragedy.

16 percent of the people believe MIHOP or LIHOP. 16 percent of the people don't believe we actually landed on the moon. 16 percent of the people would do just about anything for a Hollywood celebrity. I think it's the same 16 percent each time. At least 16 percent of people are just crazy.

[Bombard]

No I think what changed American public’s view was what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.