Birthplace of the Second Amendment 1765: CNN Poll: Support for stricter gun control fades

Thursday, December 5, 2013

CNN Poll: Support for stricter gun control fades

By CNN Political Unit - 12/5/2013

Washington (CNN) - As memories fade from last December's horrific school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, a new national poll indicates that support for stricter gun control laws appears to be fading, too.

According to a new CNN/ORC International survey, 49% of Americans say they support stricter gun control laws, with 50% opposed. The 49% support is down six percentage points from the 55% who said they backed stricter gun control in CNN polling from January, just a few weeks after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where a lone gunman killed 20 young students and six adults before killing himself, in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

The poll's Wednesday release comes on the same day that 911 tapes from the Newtown shootings are being released. Intensity fading

The survey indicates that the intensity of opinion on the issue of gun control, once an advantage for gun-control advocates, no longer benefits either side. In January, 37% of all Americans strongly favored stricter gun laws, with 27% strongly opposed to them. Now that 10-point difference has completely disappeared, with the number who strongly oppose and strongly favor stricter gun control at essentially the same level.

And according to the poll, geography plays a role in the fading support for gun control.

"Demographically speaking, the drop in support for stricter gun laws is mostly based on where people live, with a 10-point decline in the Midwest and a 15-point drop in urban areas having a lot to do with the overall decline nationally," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said.

"Two-thirds of people who live in big cities supported stricter gun control laws in the weeks following Newtown; now that figure is down to a bare majority. And while support for new gun laws is down in all regions of the country, it has fallen further in the Midwest," Holland added.

The poll indicates that majorities in the Northeast and the West still favor stricter gun control, but majorities in the South and Midwest now oppose it.

Support for gun control has waxed and waned

The survey's release comes just a few days after the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Brady Bill, which instituted federal background checks on firearm purchases. The law was named after James Brady, President Ronald Reagan's first White House Press Secretary, who was critically wounded during the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan.

In December 1993, just days after the Brady Bill was signed into law, 70% of all Americans supported stricter gun control. By 1995, that number had dropped to 59%, and by early 1996 it had fallen to just 48%, the lowest level in CNN polling.

By the late 1990s, support for stricter gun control had rebounded to 62%, dropping again to 52% by 2003. A decade later, at the start of this year, it was still in the mid-50s before dropping to 49%.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from Nov. 18-20, with 843 adults nationwide questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

CNN Political Editor Paul Steinhauser contributed to this report.

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It All Started Here . . .

Frontier Mercersburg in 1765 was the "birthplace" of the right we now refer to as "the Second Amendment", or, "the right to bear arms". It was here that individuals for the first time, some would say divinely, embraced the link between "Life and Liberty". . . and struck the first blow for Freedom.

Historically the right to bear arms goes back even before our founding as a nation to the Glorious Revolution of 1689 when William III agreed to the English Bill of Rights. If one can look at revolution like a volcanic eruption in nature, you understand that often from the destruction come the seeds of new human values and beliefs. In this case the independence of the human spirit, the right to know God for oneself, and to trust your conscience was hard won in this revolution of the human soul.

One crucible begets the necessity for another and on the frontier in America the right to defend ones religious beliefs was becoming the right to participate in the decisions of government that impact my "self". Freedom of the soul was becoming freedom of the heart and mind. Smith's Rebellion began as an act they justified under the rubric of defending oneself because government had failed in its obligation to protect Life, Liberty and Property. This was the first assertion of this principle aimed directly at British Military Authority as well as the incompetent government of John Penn - anywhere in the colonies.

In the end, Smith's Rebellion was the first armed resistance against British Military Rule leading up to the American Revolution. It was the first American triumph over the best military force in the world. It was the first time upon defending oneself that Americans had proclaimed we can rule ourselves.

It would be ten years before the battles at Lexington and Concord.

...Let Them Take Arms

The "Right to Bear Arms" . . .or 2nd Amendment is one of the most discussed and contentious of all the amendments of the Bill of Rights. It is, in fact, the only amendment that contains not only the seeds but the actual instruments of the revolution itself. Further, it gives real affirmation to Thomas Jefferson's quote . . .
"God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that this people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to the facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."

It is for this reason, if no other, that the Government and its functionaries vociferously assail and obfuscate the text of this simple assertion. More, it is for this reason, and in the face of the perennial onslaught that its defense and affirmation is essential to the survival of the republic.

Frontier Mercersburg & The Justice William Smith House

The frontier town of Mercersburg, PA. in the 1760's, although typical of many settlements along the Appalachian Mountains played a pivotal role in the creation of what was to become the "Bill of Rights".

Frontiersmen like James Smith and the Black Boys, many of whom were inhabitants of the Mercersburg environs, were early participants in a series of conflicts with the British government that established principles the eventually lead to the inclusion of the "right to bear arms" in the Bill of Rights.

Much of the focus, centers on the domicile (and likely place of business) of Justice William Smith.

Birthplace of the Second Amendment 1765

Pages

Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - Bill of Rights

Preservation and Proposition

Thursday, December 5, 2013

CNN Poll: Support for stricter gun control fades

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