A leading national grassroots gun rights organization has a message for state lawmakers, members of Congress and the media: Second Amendment rights are not subject to public opinion polls, especially when such surveys are used to justify proposed bans on certain types of firearms.
The right to keep and bear arms protected by the Second Amendment does not discriminate between types of arms, whether they be rifles, handguns or shotguns, or type of actions, including lever- or bolt-actions, single-shots, pump-actions or semiautomatics.
“Fundamental rights, including the right to keep and bear arms, must never be determined by the whims of survey respondents,” said Alan Gottlieb, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. “We don’t have popularity contests to determine the rights of free speech or the press. We would hardly allow a public opinion poll to dictate whether people should worship in a church, mosque or synagogue. So, why would we think it’s allowable for a survey to tell us whether we should ban a whole class of firearms, when the Second Amendment has protected the rights of gun owners for more than two centuries?”
But in his home state of Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson, both Democrats, are calling for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” this year. A press release from Ferguson’s office pointed to opinion polls last summer showing public support for such a ban. The release pointed to a July poll, sponsored by The Seattle Times, KING 5, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public and Washington State University’s Murrow College of Communication, “found that more than 60 percent of Washingtonians support a ban on assault weapons in the state.”
A June survey for the Northwest Progressive Institute said 56 percent of Washington voters “support a ban on the sale of assault weapons,” the release said. That poll was done by Public Policy Polling.
In Illinois, the state House passed a ban last week 64-43.
The Salt Lake Tribune recently reported on a Utah poll showing 60 percent of Beehive State residents “support banning both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.” The story cited a summer 2022 Fox News survey that also found public support for a ban.
“Anyone who honestly believes a survey should justify the erosion of any right guaranteed by our constitution needs a refresher course in high school civics,” Gottlieb observed in a statement to the media. “Rights are special. We don’t need government permission to exercise them, nor do we need the blessing of a vocal minority, because in this country, citizens do not answer to the wishes of a mob.
“At the moment we allow ourselves to fall into this trap,” he said, “we stop becoming a republic and start being an oligarchy, if not a dictatorship. This is not how rights are decided, because a right popular one week might fall out of favor the following week with a different polling sample, and then where would we be? Within a few weeks, we would have no rights at all.”
