Nate Silver tracks the change in public opinion about gun control over recent decades and points out a significant factor:
...Americans have generally become more protective of gun ownership rights in recent years....
According to Gallup surveys, for instance, the number of Americans favoring a ban on handguns has been on a long-term decline and is now about 30 percent, down almost 10 percentage points from a decade earlier...
It’s interesting to ask why, exactly, this has happened....
Indeed. Silver looks at various factors that could have led to this, including rates of gun ownership, shifts in rural-to-urban population, and rates of violent crime, and finds no apparent correlation.
One factor though does seem to have a correlation - the positions taken by the major political parties.
The respective positions of the parties have shifted over time. In 1968, Republicans took a moderate position on guns as part of Richard Nixon’s emphasis on law-and-order. Their platform favored "enactment of legislation to control indiscriminate availability of firearms" while "safeguarding the right of responsible citizens to collect, own and use firearms for legitimate purposes", and recommended a balance between federal and state responsibilities.
Obviously THAT has changed.
By 1992, however, Republican language was less equivocal, and claimed that liberals were weak on guns, just as they were on national defense...
The 2004 platform invoked the Second Amendment much more confidently than in the past, and its support for gun rights was more sweeping, opposing licensing and registration requirements and chiding liberals for their "frivolous lawsuits against firearms manufacturers"
What's more interesting is how the Democratic position on gun control has changed. From McGovern’s platform in 1972 calling for a ban on handguns, the issue went to barely being mentioned in the 1980s Democratic platforms. Clinton fought a very narrow fight to ban only assault weapons in the 1990s. In short, Democrats were in retreat on the issue.
Then, in 2004, the retreat picked up speed:
John Kerry’s platform that year opened by promising to "protect Americans’ Second Amendment right to own firearms" and then advocated only measured steps to limit access to guns, like "closing the gun show loophole".
The 2008 platform said:
We recognize that the right to bear arms is an important part of the American tradition, and we will preserve Americans’ Second Amendment right to own and use firearms. We believe that the right to own firearms is subject to reasonable regulation, but we know that what works in Chicago may not work in Cheyenne.
As Silver says, Democrats may have figured gun control to be a loser issue and one best left alone. Or they may have created a self-fulfilling prophecy by refusing to fight the powerful NRA on the issue. I tend to believe it's the latter. If no party leaders are publicly and passionately fighting on an issue, that issue is going nowhere. And if both parties spout the same rhetoric, they inevitably shape public opinion in that direction.
As Dave Weigel astutely points out today, instead of wasting time, energy, and outrage on the latest stupidity from the mouth of the half-term former governor of Alaska, if the issue of gun control is important to you, now is the time to speak out:
It has kickstarted debate in Washington on two or three bills -- a ban on high-capacity magazines, expanding the laws banning threats against the president and vice president to all federal officials, and a proposal for a 1000-foot zone around federal officials in which no guns are allowed....
(A)ll big gun control measures have come in response to tragedies....
Liberals who obsess over the rhetoric of conservatives are, ironically, closing the window they might -- might! -- have for introducing and passing limited gun control legislation.
If gun control in any form is important to you, NOW is the time to express your views, in your blogging, and in your calls and letters to your congresspersons and senators.