Gun control groups keep claiming Americans want more restrictions — but a new Rasmussen poll tells a very different story. Jeff breaks down why support for stricter gun laws is trending down, what's driving the shift, and why this matters for every gun owner who's tired of being told they're on the wrong side of history.
Welcome to the Live Shoot Podcast. My name is Jeff Dalla, and I'm a licensed firearm dealer for the last 19 years. In this podcast, we talk about all things related to the Second Amendment, anything else going on in the world, a sports story, or anything else that I might find interesting. So welcome, welcome, welcome. We are in the beginning of the election season. We will have the midterms in November, and you will start seeing a ton of campaign ads on your TV, in your mailbox what have you, billboards. And on the left, one of the topics doesn't fail every year, every election period that they, they wanna talk about is gun control or common sense gun laws. That's what they're gonna frame it as. But today, I wanna talk about something that they, the gun control advocates, really don't want you to see. It's a, a polling problem, and it's getting harder and harder for them to igno- ignore. So for years, the anti-gun crowd has insisted that Americans are demanding more restrictions on their Second Amendment rights. They wave around polls. They go on cable news. They stand at podiums and say, "American people are with us." Americans cr- increasingly appear to be having other ideas. A new Rasmussen report survey just came out, and on it, it found that only 48% of likely US voters believe the country needs stricter gun control laws. Now, that's down from 51%. And before you say, "Jeff, 48% is still a lot of people," let me put it in context for you. That number has been turning downward consistently, and here's what gets interesting. The same survey found that 47% of Americans think current gun laws are strict enough or even too strict So you've essentially got a split. Nearly half the country is saying, "No, we don't need more gun control." That's not exactly the overwhelming mandate the gun control lobby keeps claiming they have. So what's that mean? It means the narrative is cracking. For decades, gun control groups like Everytown and Giffords and Brady and all the rest have operated under the assumption that they have public opinion locked down. They act like it's only a matter of time before the American people rise up and demand sweeping gun restrictions. But the data is telling a different story. Support for stricter gun laws is softening, not hardening. Now, let's be straight with you. Polls are polls. I'm not somebody who lives and dies by survey numbers. I've seen polls that are skewed. I've seen polls that are manipulated by the way questions are asked. We all know that. But there's this thing, Rasmussen isn't flying a fly-by-night outfit, and e- when even mainstream polling starts showing a downward trend in gun con-- support for gun control, you have to pay attention to that because the gun control movement uses polling as one of their primary weapons. They go to Congress, they go to state legislators, and they say, "Look, the people want this." When the foundation starts to erode, the entire argument weakens. So why is this shift happening? I think there are a few reasons. First, over the last several years, we've seen a massive surge in new gun owners. We're taking-- talking millions of first-time buyers, people who may, may never thought about owning a firearm suddenly found themselves in a line in the gun store. Whether it was the pandemic, the riots of 2020, rising crime, concerns about personal safety, whatever it is, Americans went out and exercised their Second Amendment rights in record numbers. And once you become a gun owner, your perspective changes. You start to understand that these laws that they're proposing don't just affect some abstract group of people out there. They affect you. They do affect your family. They affect your ability to protect yourself. Second, I think people are waking up to the fact that gun control doesn't work the way politicians promise it will. You look at cities like Chicago, Baltimore, Washington, DC, cities with some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, and they continue to have some of the highest violent crime rates. People see that, they're not stupid, and they can look around and say, "Hey, wait a minute. If more gun control laws were the answer, these places would be the safest cities in America." And they're, they're not. So the logic just doesn't hold up. And I think there's even a broader awakening happening about government overreach in general. People have been watching agencies like the ATF try to redefine what's legal and what's not through regulatory interpretation rather than through legislation. They've seen the pistol brace debacle. They've seen attempts to create backdoor registries. They've seen the weaponization of bureaucracy against law-abiding citizens, and it's making people skeptical. When the government says, "Trust us, we just want common sense gun reform," more and more Americans are saying, "No, thanks." Now, here's the bottom line. These polling trends matter because it strips away one of the most powerful tools in the gun control playbook. If they can't claim majority support, their political leverage shrinks. Politicians who might have been on the fence about supporting gun control have less c-cover to do so, and that's a good thing for every law-abiding citizen in the country. But let me say, also say this, we can't get complacent. At forty-eight percent support, the number for stricter gun control seem, still seems roughly half the country is in favor of it. That's not a number to celebrate. That's a number to take seriously. It means we still have work t-to do to educate, educate people about what the Second Amendment actually means, why it exists, and why it matters for everybody, not just gun owners. This isn't just about guns. It's about whether we live in a country where the government serves the people or the people serve the government. The Second Amendment is the backstop for every other right we have, and when support for the s-restricting it starts to decline, that tells that more Americans are beginning to understand that. So keep talking to your neighbors, keep telling, taking new shooters to the range, keep having those conversations because the numbers show when people get educated, when they get experience, they come around. Truth's on our side. We just have to keep telling it. So if you find this valuable, subscribe, give it five stars, share it with somebody, whatever. Just help get the word out because we gotta keep getting this information out to people if we wanna keep winning. And w-we have to do that as, as it pertains to these elections that are coming up because there are some radicals that are running in th- in these midterms, and they're going to be wanting to restrict your gun rights. Guarantee it. Guarantee it. So this topic is not going away. So we gotta keep spreading the word and, and explaining what, what it means to s- have a Second Amendment right. So I'm Jeff Dowdle, this is Libery to Shoot podcast. Stay informed, stay armed, and let's keep fighting. Have a good week.
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