Despite the horrific mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard on Monday, support for more gun control has fallen to its lowest level in over a year. Most Americans don’t think tougher gun control would have prevented this week’s killings anyway.
Just 33% of American Adults believe it’s at least somewhat likely that stricter gun control laws would have prevented the mass shooting in Washington, DC, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. That includes 15% who say it is Very Likely stricter laws would have prevented the tragedy. Fifty-nine percent (59%) think it’s unlikely tougher gun laws would have prevented the shooting, including 26% who say it’s Not At All Likely.
via 33% Think Stricter Gun Laws Might Have Prevented Navy Yard Shooting – Rasmussen Reports™.
You know, if this year’s Pro-Gun vs Gun Control was a boxing match, the ref would have stopped the fight by now and sent Gun Control home.
More guns? Even ONE gun in a gun free zone could have stopped the carnage in any one of the mass shootings that have occurred in the past years.
Err, No….
Gun in the “Gun Free” Navy Yard just provided the shooter with a second weapon. 🙁
Lemme rephrase that.
Even one person who has a CCP with a gun in Navy Yard would’ve stopped the shooter.
Or I dunno, allowing the Marines to patrol with ammunition.
See my reply below; armed guards and cops are generally known quantities, which makes it easy for the criminal to gain the element of surprise.
Conversely, average armed citizens are an unknown quantity to the criminal. Furthermore, once the shooting starts, the criminal becomes a largely known quantity (you know where he is, and can perhaps figure out where he is going), and it therefore becomes possible for average armed citizens to ambush him.
I like David Codrea’s take on this one. The headline that 33% think more “gun control” would have helped conveniently ignores, understates, and gets a different reaction than the equally-correct, “67% DON’T….”
When you have near back to back mass shootings in each of the two cities in the US with the most Draconian gun laws, you really have to stop and think. Would more laws really help? Apparently, 33% didn’t bother to think.
Chicago, D.C, Connecticut and CA.
Keep passing those laws. Eventually the bad guys are BOUND to notice and stop killing.
OR…
You can shoot them like the Police and Military do.
Seems to me that the whole “hurt the bad guys” thing’s been working out pretty good for them since, oh, the beginning of time, but by all means don’t change a single iota of your mindset.
Quickly, as fast as you can, pass more legislation against the wanton slaughter of innocents. Appeal to the good side of the murderers and rapists. I’m sure that as soon as they see the earnest and caring expression on you face and the heartfelt words of peace from your mouth they’ll have a change of heart and start ladling soup at the nearest homeless shelter.
Or they’ll dome you and move on to next innocent victim they can find. But for Gods sake, don’t take responsibility for the lives of the innocents around you. that might be dangerous. Far more dangerous than only being killed yourself. After all, if you’re dead you won’t have to witness the deaths of everyone behind you. At least then you won’t have to make any hard decisions. MUCH easier to just accept his power over you and surrender to a death that you could have prevented…
Sorry for the rant, but I’m not deleting it.
Gun control and it’s adherents are to dumbest lot in Gods creation.
That’s not really a fair comparison though.
Cops and armed guards are almost universally uniformed, and generally follow a planed patrol route. This makes it extremely easy to ambush one or two such persons and take their guns, because the perpetrator of the massacre knows where they are, where they are going, and what they look like. Therefore, all the criminal needs to do is examine the patrol route to find a good ambush site. In short, 1-2 armed guards do little to prevent this type of action because it’s too easy for a criminal to take them by surprise.
This doesn’t apply to the average armed citizen, because the criminal doesn’t know who we are, where we are, or what we look like. However, after the shooting starts, we know where HE is, and we can largely track him based on the noise/carnage. In short, this grants US the potential to have the element of surprise on our side.
Therefore, the ideal answer to this type of criminal action is actually armed response by average citizens, and not by police or other designated persons.
This was supposed to show up under the comment from Gary Griffiths above.
Chrome can really be irritating sometimes…
Still a diehard Firefox user.
I’m a tabwhore, and chrome handles that more gracefully, at least to a point.
The big issue for tabwhores is that anything that runs scripts (java, flash, etc.) is detrimental to long-term stability. In my experience, the number one offender is advertisements. Sure, they may be annoying at times, but they almost universally use scripts inefficiently, and pages often have several of them; the effects on stability are therefore cumulative.
The cause of my issue above is largely rooted in the hack job of an extension that I use to block scripts: clearly one or more desirable scripts were blocked for some reason.