Guns and Public Opinion

Public opinion about gun ownership has changed drastically in the last decade or so.  Personally, I think the largest catalyst for this has been the concealed carry legislation that has swept the nation.  The most ironic part of the transformation is that the media helped change people minds, unintentional.  Without fail, as a State moved towards legalizing the carrying of concealed weapon the media would start their negative campaign against this constitutional right.  The media would tell stories about how road rage incidents would turn violent or how an argument at the gas pump would turn into the OK corral.  There will be blood in the streets!  The anti-gun, anti-freedom and anti-American Brady group held press conferences about how children would be dying and how unsafe the state will become. 

The problem with all of this speculation was the fact that state by state as laws were changed crime went down, without expectation.  Road rage didn’t turn violent and there were no OK corral arguments about who arrived at the pump first.  The type of people that apply for and are issued permits are law-abiding citizens that follow the law.

So, I think what happened is that people would hear the media speculation and then one year would go by and crime goes down.  Two years goes by and crime goes down.  This happened throughput the country as each state eased their concealed carry laws.  I think level headed people looked at this and realized that honest people with guns is not a bad thing.  And guess what, the criminals were already carrying guns, illegally!

Since public opinion has changed the media is now trying to capitalize on this nationwide change of opinion.  Turn on the television and you will find many new pro-gun shows that have quite the following.  Shows like Top Shot, American Guns, Sons of Guns and Gun Talk TV.  Guns are back in the mainstream and people are buying guns like crazy right now because of it.  People are finding how much fun a day at the range can be and how safe guns are when handled properly.