Op-Ed: 90% Don’t Want More Background Checks

The number is far smaller, and Americans oppose Obama's gun control agenda

Gun control advocates like President Obama keep claiming that 80 to 90 percent of Americans are in favor of expanded background check legislation. Only, it’s not true.

Liberal fact checkers were less than thrilled with any objections to this false orthodoxy. PolitiFact’s Lauren Carroll cites a series of polls from Quinnipiac University, CBS/New York Times, Gallup and others to buttress claims the figure is on target.

But these polls really ask little more than whether people want to stop criminals from obtaining guns. They don’t ask whether voters favor actual legislation that would actually impose background checks on the private transfer of guns.

Somehow, Carroll managed to avoid any of the polls that were done on specific legislation. Take an April 2013 Pew Research Center poll, which asked voters whether they were happy that the U.S. Senate had voted down legislation on background checks for private gun transfers. While 67 percent of Democrats were “disappointed” or “angry” about the defeat, both Republicans (51 percent to 34 percent) and independents (48 to 41) were generally happy that it had been stopped.

A Reason-Rupe poll also came out in the aftermath of the bill’s defeat. It found that Americans, by a margin of 62-33, wanted Congress to move on to other issues rather than immediately trying again to pass the bill.

But don’t just look at the polls. In Washington state, gun control advocates were able to write up their own initiative and put it on the ballot. With a 50-to-1 spending advantage — $9.5 million versus a couple hundred thousand — the initiative passed with just 59 percent of the vote. Even in a liberal state, and with a massive spending campaign, the referendum fell 31 percentage points short of the claimed 90 percent support.

Click here to read the entire op-ed at LifeZette.com.