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NRA (National Riffle Association) late to the party and trying to take credit for said party

I personally are really begining to HATE these guys.


We keep seeing reports of the gallant NRA rushing in to sue Seattle’s mayor over an unconstitutional law. There is a small problem with said suit. The Washington STATE attorney has ALREADY said it NOT only violates the second amendment of the US constitution, but, it violates the Washington STATE constitution as well. Hence the law is not valid and thus not enforceable. So as far as it goes the law does not exist. So the police can not enforce the law, if they try to they stand to be sued civilly and open to prosecution by the attorney general of the state of Washington.
So basically the NRA is spending it’s members money and trying to get headlines showing they support gun rights, when, in actuality the case has already be resolved by the attorney general. There is ABSOLUTLY nothing to be gained here. All that can be gained here is the NNRA can say “we fought for and won Seattle gun owners rights” join the NRA and we will do the same all over the country. The actual truth here is they will when NOTHING but a court ruling saying the NRA filed a brief and the court aggress that the NRA’s point was agreed upon by the Washington State Attorney General. Basically the NRA will be giving themselves a virtual hand job.
Anyone could have filed the lawsuit and won. The win is as fake as the NRA itself. They both are as fake as the belief that the world was flat of several hundred years ago, and as fake as the Y2K ending of the world scam. All this is, is a scam. A scam put forth by the outgoing Seattle mayor and a scam put forth by the NRA since the issue has already been determined by the state attorney general. Do not buy into the hype.

Gun Control: Schemed by Tyrants, Supported by idiots

This found on http://www.lewrockwell.com a very good read. Well worth the time.


I’m sure my environment while growing up had a great deal to do with my attitude towards the rights of a free people to own firearms. To me it has always been a no-brainer. From the simple act of providing for the defense of one’s life and property and the defense of those with whom we have a responsibility, to preventing criminals from enslaving us, it all seems to be so fundamental. Relinquishing of that right to those who seek domination and control over our very existence is absurdity squared. Yet, a great number of our population continues to believe the propaganda that we can and will be protected by the state. I totally understand the propensity of many to attempt, with intellectual facts, to change their minds. My life’s experience has taught me this is analogous to taking a knife to a gunfight.


If one is to enslave a people and get them to participate in the process, logical, cognitive discourse must be replaced with emotional claptrap. It must become all about how a person “feels” about a subject rather than how they view the subject intellectually. Everything in our society today, by design of course, is based on emotion. TV shows and movies are filled with heart rendering music and dialogue; 24-hour news networks ply the heartstrings with one emotional story after another. Public education is centered on emotions; that is why History has been replaced with Social Studies and Physics and Chemistry have been replaced with diversity studies and “green” everything. Facts must never get in the way of emotions if the state is to be properly served.


How else could the peoples of a country believe that one could atone for the mistreatment of a race over a century ago by punishing members of another race today, none of whom were alive when the persecution took place? How could the burning of a city and the killing of its inhabitants during the War for Southern Independence be looked upon as a crime while the burning of portions of an entire state and the rape and killing of its inhabitants be seen as morally acceptable? How, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, can a group of people believe the police can protect them from crime, when five minutes of the evening news in any metropolitan area proves the opposite? If one is to believe the propaganda of the state, one must never let facts get in the way; emotions must rule in all decisions.


Decades ago I labored under the belief that if I educated myself on facts, figures and statistics, I could debate those who believed in gun control and might even be able to convert some of them to the truth. I was puzzled and disappointed when my intellectual arguments made no impression at all with those who were even willing to discuss the subject. It was when I began to push the point with many of them that I saw the anger and emotions come bubbling to the surface. At the time I remember discussing this with my grandfather and can still hear his response in my mind: “Son, don’t try to make sense of people who don’t have any.” But, I still could not understand; many of the folks I had been debating were well educated. It was then I learned that being educated does not confer any degree of common sense.


Gun control advocates today generally fall into one of two groups. On the one hand are those who deal with the issue emotionally, while members of the other group have an agenda. Approaching members of either group with intellectual ammunition is a completely wasted effort. I saw the futility of discussing the issue with those who can only address the issue emotionally several years back. I was under contract to provide personal security for a group of software engineers and mathematicians from Europe as they were touring the American Southwest. Over dinner one night in Old Town Sacramento, the subject of discussion was the then recent events at Columbine High School. The consensus of the group was Americans must be mad to allow private citizens to own firearms. Although I did not bring up the subject, I relished the opportunity to provide these mathematicians, those who deal in absolutes and axioms, with facts and figures to support my case. One lady in particular was most vocal in her position and she and I eventually became the only two in the discussion, with the others seeming content to just listen. I felt that I was able to counter each point the lady made with facts and statistics proving her points to be incorrect or based on false assumptions. Finally, she said in frustration, “I don’t care how many facts and figures you present, you are never going to change my mind.” We have all encountered this mindset. Any attempts to reach these folks with the truth will always prove fruitless. Do not continue to waste your time.


This is the problem we face in not only gun control but in many other facets of the quest for liberty. The indoctrination embraced by the public schools, the media, and of course politicians, has taken many people into the abyss of situational ignorance. The other group, those with an agenda, is also easy to identify. Most of these are politicians or employees of government. If they advocate openly their belief that only the police and military should be armed, they are criminals, plain and simple, and should never be trusted on any issue. Those who seek to justify their criminality with some humanitarian approach are simply criminals who want their crimes to appear less invasive and therefore justified. They, too, are to never be trusted on any issue. Many times you will encounter employees of the government who will simply avoid any direct answer to questions concerning their oaths or their willingness to follow orders when those orders are criminal in nature. An answer such as “that will never happen” is simply an avoidance of admitting they will do whatever they are told to do because their paycheck depends on it. Put these folks on your enemies list as well.


Patriots and gun rights advocates, please stop sending your hard-earned money to gun rights groups who exist solely to lobby those in power to do that which they have sworn a sacred oath to perform. If someone, after taking such an oath, has to be wined and dined, taken on junkets, or in other ways influenced into doing that which they swore an oath to do, they too are your enemy. They are nothing but political whores selling themselves, your rights, and their country to the highest bidder. Eventually, someone will offer them more money than the gun rights folks can afford to match. Can you imagine paying your minister to stop pursuing your wife, molesting your children, or paying your neighbor to not break into your house? Anyone who must be paid to do that which is right will at some point be paid more to do that which is wrong. Support only those who will not compromise on basic rights. Others are living high on your money and have consistently supported compromises of your basic human rights. Also, look at their results; after collecting untold millions, are our rights more or less secure? Never fall for the old socialist argument of “look how much worse it could have been had we not been here.”


Those who advocate gun control as a means of enslaving the people will never be influenced by an intellectual argument, presentation of facts and figures, or a simple plea to do that which is right. Those who are influenced into making decisions based on their emotions are now being motivated by a stronger emotion: fear, the fear that what we have been telling them for years is true. Countless thousands of folks who previously did not own a gun, have been purchasing guns and ammo at a record pace. Actions by this criminal government have awakened some of the sheeple where our intellectual arguments have failed.


Don’t waste your time, money or efforts on “educating” those who believe in gun control. This criminal government is doing it much better than we ever could.

obama violates federal law again as far as the cdc doing guns and ammo research, violating a law passed by congress decades ago

For a decade, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has been forbidden by Congress from doing research on gun-control issues. Such piddling hurdles as federal law don’t matter to the Obama administration.

With a wave of a hand, the CDC has simply redefined gun-control research so the ban no longer applies. They’re not researching guns; they’re researching alcohol sales and their impact on gun violence, or researching how teens carrying guns affect the rates of non-gun injuries. “These particular grants do not address gun control; rather they deal with the surrounding web of circumstances,” wrote National Institutes of Health (NIH) spokesman Don Ralbovsky.

Gun-control advocates claim that banning the CDC from examining gun control amounts to a gag order on science. After all, what can be wrong with further scientific inquiry? But the issue isn’t about scientific inquiry. It is whether government resources should be used to promote an ideological agenda.

Take the Obama administration’s justification for its new gun research. “Gun-related violence is a public health problem – it diverts considerable health care resources away from other problems and, therefore, is of interest to NIH,” wrote the agency spokesman in an e-mail responding to questions from Republican members of Congress about new grants the CDC is giving out. The statement assumes the conclusion of the research before the first study is done.

The research on right-to-carry laws illustrates the problem with the CDC. Dozens of refereed academic studies by economists and criminologists using national data have been published in journals. While the vast majority of those studies find that right-to-carry laws save lives and reduce harm to victims, some studies claim that the laws have no statistically significant effect. But most tellingly, there is not a single published refereed academic study by a criminologist or economist showing a bad effect from these laws.

Look at the refereed academic research on laws that require people to lock up their guns in their homes. The number of accidental gun deaths and suicides of children remain unchanged, but the number of murders and other crimes rises. This is not too surprising as the locks make it more difficult for potential victims to quickly obtain a gun for protection, hence criminals are less likely to be deterred. Accidental gun deaths aren’t affected because most involve guns fired by adults with criminal records.

The research on guns that the CDC conducted before the ban – and that “public health” advocates continue to produce – is a joke. The statistical methods to research people’s behavior, such as criminal activity, are different from methods used to evaluate drug efficacy, where controlled experiments can be done.

In drug studies, patients don’t determine who gets the real drug and who gets the placebo. In real life, gun ownership isn’t assigned randomly. People who are more likely to be victims are more likely to own guns. They may still be more likely to be victims even after getting a gun, but are much less likely to be a victim than they would have been if they had never gotten one.

The CDC’s brazen end run around restrictions on gun-control research is hardly surprising given that when President Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation, it was the largest private funder of gun-ban research in the country. Now he has the resources of the whole federal government.

First we’ll get the half-baked studies followed by fawning press coverage. Then Democratic politicians and activists will pretend the gun restrictions they’ve always wanted were spurred by the new government research.

Some States launch boycott of ‘unconstitutional’ federal laws

By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Tennessee is urging 49 other states to come together and create a “joint working group between the states” to combat unconstitutional federal legislation and assert state rights.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed HJR 108, the State Sovereignty Resolution on June 23. According to the Tenth Amendment Center, the resolution created a committee to form a joint working group between the states to enumerate the abuses of authority by the federal government and seek repeal of imposed mandates.

State Rep. Susan Lynn recently wrote a letter to the other 49 state legislatures, inviting them to join the group and warning that the role of the federal government has been “blurred, bent and breached.”

“The national government has become a complex system of programs whose purposes lie outside of the responsibilities of the enumerated powers and of securing our natural rights; programs that benefit some while others must pay,” Lynn wrote. “Today, the federal government seeks to control the salaries of those employed by private business, to change the provisions of private of contracts, to nationalize banks, insurers and auto manufacturers, and to dictate to every person in the land what his or her medical choices will be.”

She continued, “Forcing property from employers to provide healthcare, legislating what individuals are and are not entitled to, and using the labor of some so that others can receive money that they did not earn goes far beyond securing natural rights, and the enumerated powers in the Constitution.”

Lynn said that the people created the federal government to be their agent only for certain enumerated purposes.

“The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that which has been delegated by the people to the federal government, and also that which is absolutely necessary to advancing those powers specifically enumerated in the Constitution of the United States,” she wrote. “The rest is to be handled by the state governments, or locally, by the people themselves.”

She noted that the Constitution does not include a congressional power to override state laws, nor does it give the judicial branch unlimited jurisdiction over all matters. Attempts to include such provisions in the Constitution were rejected by the Founding Fathers.

“With this in mind,” she wrote, “any federal attempt to legislate beyond the Constitutional limits of Congress’ authority is a usurpation of state sovereignty – and unconstitutional. Governments and political leaders are best held accountable to the will of the people when government is local. The people of a state know what is best for them; authorities, potentially thousands of miles away, governing their lives is opposed to the very notion of freedom.”

(Story continues below)

In one example of Tennessee’s battle against federal government policies, federal gun regulators wrote to gun dealers around Tennessee in July, dropping the hammer on a state law that exempts weapons made, sold and used inside the state from interstate regulations.

The letter was distributed to holders of Federal Firearms Licenses.

In it, Carson W. Carroll, the assistant director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, told dealers the Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act, adopted this year, “purports to exempt personal firearms, firearms accessories, and ammunition manufactured in the state, and which remain in the state, from most federal firearms laws and regulations.”

The exemption is not right, the federal agency letter contends.

More recently, the state of Montana filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder seeking a court order that the federal government stay out of the way of Montana’s management
of its own firearms.

As WND reported, the action was filed by the Second Amendment Foundation and the Montana Shooting Sports Association in U.S. District Court in Missoula, Mont., to validate the principles and terms of the Montana Firearms Freedom Act, which took effect Oct. 3.

The law provides guns and ammo made, sold and used in Montana would not require any federal forms; silencers made and sold in Montana would be fully legal and not registered; and there would be no firearm registration, serial numbers, criminal records check, waiting periods or paperwork required.

The idea is spreading quickly. Similar plans have been introduced in many other states.

Montana’s plan is called “An Act exempting from federal regulation under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution of the United States a firearm, a firearm accessory, or ammunition manufactured and retained in Montana.”

The law cites the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees to the states and their people all powers not granted to the federal government elsewhere in the Constitution and reserves to the state and people of Montana certain powers as they were understood at the time it was admitted to statehood in 1889.

“The guaranty of those powers is a matter of contract between the state and people of Montana and the United States as of the time that the compact with the United States was agreed upon and adopted by Montana and the United States in 1889,” the law states.

The lead attorney for the plaintiffs’ litigation team is Quentin Rhodes of the Missoula firm of Sullivan, Tabaracci & Rhoades, PC. The team includes other attorneys working in Montana, New York, Florida, Arizona and Washington.

“We’re happy to join this lawsuit,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the SAF, “because we believe this issue should be decided by the courts.

“We feel very strongly that the federal government has gone way too far in attempting to regulate a lot of activity that occurs only in-state,” added MSSA President Gary Marbut. “The Montana Legislature and governor agreed with us by enacting the MFFA. We welcome the support of many other states that are stepping up to the plate with their own firearms freedom acts.”

Guns and ammo stock pick from The Wall Street Journal

We try not to give stock and financial advice here. However, if this report from the Wall Street Journal is correct, look to buy this stock when it goes IPO. Bear in mind if the other party takes over congress in 2010 or obama gets booted out in 2012 get rid of your stock right before hand. Again this is just advice our two cents worth. We are not stock experts or financial experts here. We are just Guns And Ammo Enthusiasts no more no less.


This from the Wall Street Journal web site.


After bad bets on cars and home loans, Cerberus Capital Management is turning to guns and bullets.

The private-equity firm is in advanced preparations for an initial public offering of Freedom Group Inc., said people familiar with the situation, hoping to sell shares in a little-known company it has built into a dominant player in the red-hot rifle-and-ammunition business.

Over a three-year span Cerberus — while under the spotlight for ill-fated acquisitions of auto maker Chrysler LLC and lender GMAC LLC — has quietly acquired at least seven U.S. gun-and-ammunition makers.

Those companies have been consolidated into a Madison, N.C.-based

It is time for obama biden to both resign or be forcibly removed from office, as they are not qualified.

In the AP article below proves back in 2004 when obama was first running for the senate obama was born in Kenya, not the USA. And thus not qualified to be the president. If we can get this information out to enough people they both will have to leave and immediately a new president and vice president elected. Why not JUST obama and let biden become president? Simple seeing as biden is vice president and run as the running mate of someone NOT eligible to run, he too is illegitimate, and can not be the vice president. Otherwise the next runner up’s become president and vice president. (On a personal note I don’t like that idea better, however, it may be the only legal way). If obama and biden are not willing to obey the laws of this land and leave peaceable leave office, we the ACTUAL citizens may need to use force to get them out. This process can and will lead to civil war, which I am not looking forward to. However, if that needs to happen then so be it. The link below is a link to a web archive of the evidence seeing as it has been scrubbed from the web. The link will take you to the article which is posted below it. However they both need to be seen to show the proof. On an aside I am not calling for violence at this point. If enough people see the proof (basically 99% of the population) then biden and obama will be forced by the public to leave. So no shooting at this point, DO NOT get your guns and start to shoot at anyone. This process of notifying everyone may take over a year, or more.


By the Way the below link and article were posted to the AP on Sunday, June 27, 2004
http://web.archive.org


Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate


   Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.


The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.


Ryan’s campaign began to crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans.


“It’s clear to me that a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I remain in the race,” Ryan, 44, said in a statement. “What would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign – the kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of politics I refuse to play.”


Although Ryan disputed the allegations, saying he and his wife went to one ‘avant-garde’ club in Paris and left because they felt uncomfortable, lashed out at the media and said it was “truly outrageous” that the Chicago Tribune got a judge to unseal the records.


The Republican choice will become an instant underdog in the campaign for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, since Obama held a wide lead even before the scandal broke.


“I feel for him actually,” Obama told a Chicago TV station. “What he’s gone through over the last three days I think is something you wouldn’t wish on anybody.”


The Republican state committee must now choose a replacement for Ryan, who had won in the primaries against seven contenders. Its task is complicated by the fact that Obama holds a comfortable lead in the polls and is widely regarded as a rising Democratic star.


The chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party, Judy Topinka, said at a news conference, after Ryan withdrew, that Republicans would probably take several weeks to settle on a new candidate.


“Obviously, this is a bad week for our party and our state,” she said.


As recently as Thursday, spokesmen for the Ryan campaign still insisted that Ryan would remain in the race. Ryan had defended himself saying, “There’s no breaking of any laws. There’s no breaking of any marriage laws. There’s no breaking of the Ten Commandments anywhere.”




—AP

In case you didn’t know the govenanter Arnold Schwarzenegger has violated the constitution

Well it happened good old Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the illegal and unconstitutional bill. Now in the soviet republic of California now has it so that all ammunition sales made in California have to have a fingerprint along with it. So basically if you want to purchase ammunition in California now, you must be fingerprinted to obtain it. This is supposedly to reduce crime. The outright insanity of that is pathetic. Criminals do not follow the law, that is what makes them criminals. So those same criminals are now not going to commit crimes with firearms because they need to provide fingerprints to buy the ammo? It is more likely that they will steal the ammo they need. I dare any bleeding heart liberal to show me where in the constitution this is legal. This is communism end of statement. The last thing to say is Thank God that this communist Arnold Schwarzenegger can not be president. I saw the rest of us Americans should take a saw, cut out California from the continent and send it adrift. Gun owners in that communist state should sue this one to the Supreme Court.

Max Baucus has something to say to gun owners: “Own a gun; lose your coverage!”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has something to say to gun owners: “Own a gun; lose your coverage!”

Baucus’ socialized health care bill comes up for a Finance Committee vote on Tuesday. We have waited and waited and waited for the shifty Baucus to release legislative language. But he has refused to release anything but a summary — and we will never have a Congressional Budget Office cost assessment based on actual legislation. Even the summary was kept secret for a long time.

But, on the basis of the summary, the Baucus bill (which is still unnumbered) tells us virtually nothing about what kind of policy Americans will be required to purchase under penalty of law — nor the consequences.


It simply says:

• all U.S. citizens and legal residents would be required to purchase coverage through (1) the individual market;


• individuals would be required to report on their federal income tax return the months for which they maintain the required minimum health coverage


• in addition to an extensive list of statutorily mandated coverage, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would be empowered to “define and update the categories of treatments, items, and services within an insurance plan which would be covered in a policy constituting “required minimum health coverage.

ObamaCare and Gun Control
It is nearly certain that coverage prescribed by the administration will, to control costs, exclude coverage for what it regards as excessively dangerous activities. And, given Sebelius’ well-established antipathy to the Second Amendment — she vetoed concealed carry legislation as governor of Kansas — we presume she will define these dangerous activities to include hunting and self-defense using a firearm. It is even possible that the Obama-prescribed policy could preclude reimbursement of any kind in a household which keeps a loaded firearm for self-defense.

The ObamaCare bill already contains language that will punish Americans who engage in unhealthy behavior by allowing insurers to charge them higher insurance premiums. (What constitutes an unhealthy lifestyle is, of course, to be defined by legislators.) Don’t be surprised if an anti-gun nut like Sebelius uses this line of thinking to impose ObamaCare policies which result in a back-door gun ban on any American who owns “dangerous” firearms.

After all, insurers already (and routinely) drop homeowners from their policies for owning certain types of guns or for refusing to use trigger locks (that is, for keeping their guns ready for self-defense!). While not all insurers practice this anti-gun behavior, Gun Owners of America has documented that some do — Prudential and State Farm being two of the most well-known.

The good news is that because homeowner insurance is private (and is still subject to the free market) you can go to another company if one drops you. But what are you going to do under nationalized ObamaCare when the regulations written by Secretary Sebelius suspend the applicability of your government-mandated policy because of your gun ownership?

All of this is in addition to something that GOA has been warning you about for several months … the certainty that minimum acceptable policies will dump your gun information into a federal database … a certainty that is reinforced by language in the summary providing for a study to “encourage increased meaningful use of electronic health records.”

Remember, the federal government has already denied more than 150,000 military veterans the right to own guns, without their being convicted of a crime or receiving any due process of law. They were denied because of medical information (such as PTSD) that the FBI later determined disqualified these veterans to own guns.

Is this what we need on a national level being applied to every gun owner in America?

Incidentally, failure to comply would subject the average family to $1,500 in fines — and possibly more for a household with older teens. And, although a Schumer amendment purports to exempt Americans from prison sentences for non-purchase of an ObamaPolicy — something which was never at issue — it doesn’t prohibit them from being sent to prison for a year and fined an additional $25,000 under the Internal Revenue Code for non-payment of the initial fines.

Well the anti gun nuts will do anything (and we mean anything) to prove their FALSE beliefs

Now, more than at any other time in anyone’s memory, the federal government is in no position to waste taxpayer dollars on gun control advocacy “research.” Nevertheless, the National Institutes of Health recently gave anti-gun researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine $639,586 to conduct a survey intended to prove that possessing a gun doesn’t benefit assault victims.

Criminologist Gary Kleck calls the resulting survey “the very epitome of junk science in the guns-and-violence field—poor quality research designed to arrive at an ideologically predetermined conclusion.”

Here’s how it was done. The Pennsylvania researchers surveyed only those assault victims who were shot, limited in the last six months of the survey to victims who were fatally shot. It did not consider the far more numerous gun owners who used guns for self-defense successfully without being shot, nor crimes that were not even attempted because the criminals feared that prospective victims might be armed.

The survey was further limited to residents of urban Philadelphia who, according to the research, “were significantly more often Hispanic, more frequently working in high-risk occupations, less educated, and had a greater frequency of prior arrest,” compared to the rest of the population. Victims who were shot in Philly, but who were not from Philly, were excluded too. The survey considered a victim to be “armed” even if his gun was “in a nearby vehicle, or in another place.”

As Kleck says, “none of the evidence presented by the authors actually has any relevance to the issue of the effectiveness of defensive gun use, for the simple reason that at no point do they ever compare crime victims who used guns defensively with victims who did not.” Kleck notes that other published research “reached precisely the opposite conclusions” reached by the NIH-funded survey.
What Kleck had in mind were the results of the federal government’s annual National Crime Victimization Survey, covering tens of thousands of assaults. Kleck and others have reviewed those surveys and found that people who use guns to defend against assaults are less likely to be injured than people who use other means, or no means, of protection.

Gallup finds a new low of 44% of Americans saying the laws covering firearm sales should be made more strict

PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup finds a new low of 44% of Americans saying the laws covering firearm sales should be made more strict. That is down 5 points in the last year and 34 points from the high of 78% recorded the first time the question was asked, in 1990.

Today, Americans are as likely to say the laws governing gun sales should be kept as they are now (43%) as to say they should be made more strict. Until this year, Gallup had always found a significantly higher percentage advocating stricter laws. At the same time, 12% of Americans believe the laws should be less strict, which is low in an absolute sense but ties the highest Gallup has measured for this response.

These results are based on Gallup's annual Crime Poll, conducted Oct.1-4 this year.

"Compared with views in 2000, each major demographic or attitudinal subgroup has shown a shift toward a more pro-gun stance on the question about whether gun laws should be more strict or less strict."

The poll also shows a new low in the percentage of Americans favoring a ban on handgun possession except by the police and other authorized persons, a question that dates back to 1959. Only 28% now favor such a ban. The high point in support for a handgun-possession ban was 60% in the initial measurement in 1959. Since then, less than a majority has been in favor, and support has been below 40% since December 1993.

The trends on the questions about gun-sale laws and a handgun-possession ban indicate that Americans' attitudes have moved toward being more pro-gun rights. But this is not due to a growth in personal gun ownership, which has held steady around 30% this decade, or to an increase in household gun ownership, which has been steady in the low 40% range since 2000.

Nor are more pro-gun attitudes a specific reaction to the election of a Democratic president, Barack Obama, whose support for gun rights is questioned at times. Though the trends on both the gun-sales and the gun-possession measures have moved in a slightly more pro-gun direction this year compared to last, both trends had been moving in that direction during the latter part of the Bush administration, which strongly supported gun rights.

Rather, Americans as a whole may just be more accepting of gun rights now than in the past. Compared with views in 2000, each major demographic or attitudinal subgroup has shown a shift toward a more pro-gun stance on the question about whether gun laws should be more strict or less strict. (The results are similar on the question of a ban on handgun possession, with nearly every major demographic group less supportive of a ban now than at the start of the decade.)

Even with the change, there are some subgroups among whom a majority continues to favor stricter gun laws, including liberals (67%), Democrats (66%), Easterners (59%), gun non-owners (57%), postgraduates (55%), women (55%), and nonwhites (51%).

The groups least in favor of stricter gun laws are gun owners (20%), Republicans (28%), conservatives (30%), and men (33%).

Bottom Line

Americans continue to trend toward holding attitudes that are more in favor of gun rights, and Gallup today finds new low points in favor of gun control on two separate measures dating back at least two decades. While solidly against a ban on handgun possession, Americans are nonetheless about equally likely to say they favor stricter laws on firearm sales as to say these laws should not change. Still, the current poll marks the first time Gallup has not found a significantly higher proportion of Americans preferring tighter gun-sale regulations.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,013 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Oct. 1-4, 2009. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on land-line telephones (for respondents with a land-line telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell-phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.