According to aย new Gallup poll, support for stricter gun control has fallen by 15 percentage points in just the last five years. But, despite the drop being driven by independents' changing views, Democrats aren't likely to rethink their support for more gun control. The partisan divide on this issue has never been so large โ 91% of Democrats and only 24% of Republicans support stricter laws.
While Democrats claim they want โreasonableโ or โcommon senseโ laws, you get an idea of how stark the partisan differences are by considering the response to Gallup's question about whether people support a complete ban on civilian ownership of handguns: 40% of Democrats like the idea compared to only 6% of Republicans.
SEE ALSO: The Supreme Court's Latest Opportunity to Defend the Second Amendment
The recent election results in Virginia and New Jersey show Democrats are in real trouble with rural, working-class voters. Some pundits put part of theย blameย on the party's constant push for gun control.
You can see the opposing views in the reactions to the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict. Democratic New York Gov. Kathy Hochulย tweetedย the lesson she took from it: โIf there was any question about why we need strong gun safety laws, this is your answer. This should never have been allowed to happen in the first place.โ
Other Democrats see gun ownership in apocalyptic terms. โThis entire tragedy [with Rittenhouse] makes the case that we should not allow our fellow Americans to own and use weapons that were originally designed for battlefield use,โย saidย Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke. โThat AR-15, that AK-47, has one single, solitary purpose and that is killing people as effectively, as efficiently, in as great a number, in as little time as possible. We saw that in Kenosha.โ
O'Rourke calls AR-15s โweapons of war,โ but he appears unaware that these guns fire the same bullets, with the same rapidity, and do the same damage as a small caliber hunting rifle. They just look like military weapons.
SEE ALSO: Ex-Reporter Says New York Times Buried Kenosha Article Until After Election
The New York Timesย tiesย the AR-15 that Rittenhouse used to the assault weapon ban lapsing in 2004 because Republicans โblocked its renewal.โย ย
Meanwhile Republicans generally viewed the case as showing the benefit of guns for self-defense. They point out the person Kyle Rittenhouse wounded admitted on the witness stand that he was shot him only after he pointed a handgun directly at Rittenhouse. Another had struck Rittenhouse in the head with a skateboard and was going to do so again before Rittenhouse shot him.
You can also see the partisan gap in aย new Rasmussen survey. While Democrats support a national registration system by a 64% to 25% margin, Republican opposition is the mirror image (27% to 63%). Sixty-four percent of Republicans fear that registration would mean the government will โeventually confiscate all guns.โ They need not be conspiracy theorists to believe that, as 40% of Democrats agree.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained a leaked document this month showing that the Biden administration has alreadyย compiledย the records of more than 54 million U.S. gun owners. They are also drastically changing Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) regulations to ensure the federal government collects all licensed dealer information on their customers.
SEE ALSO: Biden Administration Collected Records From Nearly 55 Million Gun Owners Last Year
It isn't hard to see why so many Americans fear that eventual confiscation is the end game. Under the label of โreasonableโ gun control laws, Democrats keep pushing rules to end private firearm ownership.
Do you think that is hyperbole?
Look no further than Biden's nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Saule Omarova.ย She calls for โdebankingโ of what she claims are โsocially sub-optimal industries.โย It is a revival of the Obama administration's โOperation Chokepoint,โ where the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) pressured banks into closing businesses' accounts. Try running a company without someone to handle credit cards, lines of credit, check cashing, and other things that financial institutions do.
Or take President Biden's โzero toleranceโ policy toward what he calls โrogueโ gun dealers. No policymaker wants dealers to secretly sell guns to criminals out of the back of their store. But that is not what Biden is going after. Even one mistake in paperwork, no matter how trivial and inconsequential, now means the loss of one's license and the end of one's business. When Biden talks aboutย 5% of the gun dealers selling 90% of the guns found at crime scenes, he ignores the fact that 95% don't.
The one common feature of these and many other proposals is to make owning a gun more costly and less common โ thus driving gun makers and sellers out of business.
The Biden administration and other Democrats, even those in conservative states like Texas orย Montana, show no intention of changing course. Republicans see Democrats releasing violent criminals on little or no bail, refusing to prosecute violent criminals, and defunding the police. The Democrats' sole focus on gun control ignores thatย 92% of violent crime has nothing to do with guns.
Republicans believe that Democrats either don't understand what works or don't really care about reducing crime.
This article originally appeared in RealClearPolitics. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions ofย American Liberty News.