NPR Survey: Majority of Gun Owners View Gun Control Legislation As Slippery Slope

WASHINGTON D.C.- A new National Public Radio/ Ipsos survey reveals that while a majority of gun owners say they approve of some gun control measures, they also view further gun control legislation as a slippery slope to eventual gun confiscation.

The survey, which involved the participation of 1,022 adults, was conducted between June 15-21, before the Highland Park 4th of July shooting and the passage of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, but after the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde. There were 445 Republicans, 183 Democrats, and 389 Independent gun owners surveyed. The margin of error was +/- 3.3 percentage points.

“This NPR/Ipsos survey of American gun owners shows that the majority of gun owners are supportive of moderate gun control measures like background checks or increased age requirements, but harbor deep distrust of government suggesting the barriers that exist to more actions on guns,” said Chris Jackson, senior vice president with Ipsos, as reported by NPR.

Eight out of ten gun owners surveyed favor universal background checks, while 72 percent believed in raising the minimum age of assault rifle purchases to 21 years old, NPR reported. Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed thought that 21 should be the minimum age for anyone to purchase a gun, and sixty-five percent believed in red flag laws.

Yet, most of those surveyed harbored a deep distrust for the federal government, with only one-quarter of gun owners surveyed trusting that the government had their best interests at heart.

“A slim majority believe passing new gun control laws is a slippery slope toward taking away all guns. Three-quarters of Republicans thought so, as did about half of independents,” NPR reported. “Sixty percent of Republican gun owners said the government wants to take away all guns, and 55% of them said passing new gun control laws goes against their Second Amendment rights.”

NPR also noted that the National Rifle Association had lost prestige in the eyes of gun owners.

“Notably, the National Rifle Association doesn’t have as much sway with gun owners as the group’s power in Washington might suggest,” NPR reported. “Gun owners are largely split on the gun lobbying group, with 53% saying they have not very much or no trust at all in the NRA.”

OUR TAKE

Law-abiding gun owners are some of the few people left in America with real, actual common-sense.

The leftists who scream for ‘common sense’ gun control are nearly always the same crowd who thinks men can have babies and who don’t know which bathrooms to use.

They haven’t got the common sense God gave a bug.

So when they report that a majority of gun owners ‘support common sense gun control’ we just have a hard time believing that their version of ‘common sense’ is the same as the average gun owners’.

After all, a gun owner would look at someone like Uvalde shooter, Salvador Ramos — with his bag of dead cats, or Highland Park mass murderer Robert Crimo III — cruising around town with a sex doll (when he wasn’t threatening to kill his entire family) and think, “That guy should be Baker Acted.”

The Baker Act — or a similar law — is already on the books in all fifty states. This allows for somebody who is acting erratically or as though they might be a danger to themselves or others to be held for psychiatric evaluation.

If they are adjudicated as mentally infirm…they would lose their gun rights.

But that process would not infringe on the rights of many tens of millions of law-abiding Americans. It does not destroy due process. It does not create a national database of gun owners.

So when these polls indicate that a majority of Americans support some ‘common sense’ gun control, what they might mean is that most gun owners support using laws already passed such as the Baker Act to stop dangerous, violent people.

Gun owners aren’t stupid. They know darn well that if the leftists in our government got the chance to strip a gun owner of their Second Amendment rights because they dared take to social media to oppose something the government is doing…they’d do it in a heartbeat.

Meanwhile, someone like Crimo III walks right in with his sex doll by his side to pick up an AR-15 with virtually no questions asked.

And since law-abiding gun owners are people of common sense, they also rightfully believe that slippery-slope argumentation can and should apply here, especially given ample example after example of government malfeasance in the last few years.