By Dave Workman
Senior Editor
More Americans trust Congressional Republicans on national gun policy than they do President Barack Obama, according to a new poll by Quinnipiac University.
The survey results also reinforce the image of Democrats as the party of gun control. Seventy-nine percent of acknowledged Democrats, 33 percent of the independents and 83 percent of the African-Americans responding to the survey trust the president more on gun issues than Republicans.
On the other hand, 82 percent of Republicans, 50 percent of the independents and only ten percent of blacks, trust Republicans to better handle the gun issue.
A whopping 88 percent of the survey participants support requiring background checks for all gun buyers including 83 percent of Republican respondents, 96 percent of the Democrats and 88 percent of independents.
The survey, taken from Feb. 27 through March 4, contacted 1,944 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus/minus 2.2 percentage points, according to a Quinnipiac University press release. Directed by Douglas Schwartz, Ph.D., the poll “conducts public opinion surveys in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Florida, Ohio, Virginia and the nation as a public service and for research,” the website states.
Asked if they support or oppose stricter gun laws without defining what that means, 79 percent of Democrats support them while 68 percent of the Republicans oppose more laws. Among independents, 48 percent oppose and 46 percent support stronger laws. Overall, the trend is that 51 percent support stricter laws while 42 percent oppose, which is a slight change from last month, when 52 percent supported and 43 percent opposed.
On the subject of so-called “assault weapons,” once again Democrats show an anti-gun-rights streak with 77 percent supporting a ban while 59 percent of the Republicans oppose the idea. Overall support for a ban has shifted slightly from a month ago, when 56 percent of all respondents supported a ban that now garners 54 percent, while 41 percent are opposed when last month 39 percent opposed it.
Seventy-six percent of Democrats support a ban on standard-capacity magazines that hold more than ten cartridges, while 62 percent of the Republican respondents oppose such a ban.
A demographic breakdown linked to the website showed that 25 percent of the respondents identified themselves as Republicans, while 34 percent were Democrats and 34 percent were independents. Seventy-three percent were white, 11 percent black and nine percent Hispanic.
Meanwhile, a poll conducted by OnMessage, Inc for the National Rifle Association among NRA members showed quite a contrast, according to The Daily Caller.
That poll, conducted with 1,000 NRA members Jan. 13-14, showed that 91 percent support laws keeping guns away from mentally ill persons, and 89 percent oppose bans on semi-automatics. Ninety-three percent of the respondents oppose a law that would require firearms registration with the federal government and 92 percent are opposed to a federal law that would ban the sale of firearms between private citizens.
While the White House appears determined to push a new gun control agenda, House Republicans threw something of a speed bump in the road with the creation of the Second Amendment Initiative by the House Republican Study Committee. Chairing the initiative effort is Indiana Rep. Marlin Stutzman.
In a press release announcing the new effort, RSC Chairman Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Indiana) asserted that the president’s “radical anti-gun agenda is a threat to our constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”
“Efforts to take away the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding Americans will not reduce crime or prevent criminals from breaking the law,” Scalise said. “We will not allow President Obama and liberals in Congress to take away our right to bear arms.”
“As the President continues his aggressive gun control campaign,” Rep. Stutzman added in a press release, “Republicans need to stand and defend our right to bear arms now more than ever…The RSC’s Second Amendment Initiative will help equip conservatives in Congress to defeat the President’s crusade for ineffective and unconstitutional gun controls.”
