Poll: Roughly half of gun owners say mass shootings are something society must accept

[DonViejo]

Source: The Hill




BY JULIA MANCHESTER - 12/14/17 08:57 AM EST

Roughly half of U.S. gun owners said that mass shootings are something a free society has to accept, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll.

Fifty-one percent of U.S. gun owners said that mass shootings are "unfortunately" something a free society must accept, while 67 percent of non-gun owners in the U.S. said mass shootings could be stopped if an effort was put in to prevent them, according to the survey.

However, 63 percent of Americans said mass shootings, like those seen in Orlando, Las Vegas and Newtown could be stopped in the future.

The poll's release comes on the fifth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting in Newtown, Conn., which left 20 children and 6 adults dead.




Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/364858-poll-roughly-half-of-gun-owners-say-mass-shootings-are

[Thor_MN]

1. These are the people that will cause firearm regulations to be imposed upon them.

They are the ones that don't think it is their responsibility to keep firearms safe. Would have been interesting to add some political view questions to the study...

[LanternWaste]

2. Dead schoolchildren are but a small price to pay

Dead schoolchildren are but a small price to pay so that my dad could receive entertainment from killing animals. Priorities, people. Priorities!!!

[diva77]

39. And they probably condemn Planned Parenthood in the same breath.

[world wide wally]

3. We've always been sold a bill of goods that America will fall because of moral decay like Rome.

They always said it was because of gay rights, abortion, or recreational drug use. Sex, drugs and rock & roll.
They may be right about the moral decay part, but they get the elements completely wrong. The real moral decay is in things like eliminating all gun laws, political corruption, and engaging in unjust wars, and destroying our planet.

[Botany]

4. Those gun owners have had their brains poisoned by years of NRA/Right Wing and ....

.... now Russian propaganda. "Gotta have guns to be a real free man, to stop the 4 am
zombie attack on your house, and to keep the big gub-ER-mint from taking your guns."

I had to go to Calebas outdoor store last weekend and I saw a car in the parking lot w/
Blackwater Security, Lock Her Up, NRA, and Trump stickers on it. The car also had a
Benghazi license plate and a sticker that showed that the owner was deputy sheriff too.
We have some real sick people out there.

BTW I have hunted and owned A FEW guns for years.

[Duppers]

5. Fucking insane monsters! nr

[LiberalFighter]

6. If those 51 percent were to disappear. I would be fine with that. Screw them!

[turbinetree]

7. EAT ME, then you are just plain fucked up and fucking sick

[byronius]

8. "Yeah, the USA is a nuclear wasteland now, but Freedom!"

[roamer65]

9. Sure, when its not their family or children.

They are sick.

[SunSeeker]

20. Thing is, they say it even when it is them and their family.

I have in-laws who attended that country music festival in the Las Vegas shooting and had to run for their lives through the rain of bullets. They are just as pro-gun now as they were before. They are now pushing a crazy conspiracy theory on Facebook that it was all some kind of false flag operation by the FBI.

Yes, they are sick.

[BadgerKid]

10. I.e. my right to own a gun is greater than your right to be safe/not shot.

Effing gun humpers!

[Marengo]

16. There is a right to be safe?

[duhneece]

35. My rights to own arms greater than your right to life

Forget the libtard phrase ‘Life Liberty and all that.

[marble falls]

11. Roughly half of gun owners (51%) need to be disarmed asap.

[Marengo]

15. Under what statute and authority? By what agency?

[marble falls]

17. As a threat to public safety? As a threat to public health? Their right to own super cedes my....

right to not being shot purely because these asses don't believe in registration and regulation as an infringement to their right to own weapons?

Do you believe that mass shootings are inevitable and the price I have to pay for you to maintain your so-called 2nd amendment rights? I am asking this in the same spirit you asked your questions of me.

For clarity: right up to about 15 years ago I believed I had the right to own any sort of firearm I pleased and if I wasn't drawing attention to myself by owning them, it was nobody's business. Not because of the 2nd amendment which says just about anything someone wants it to say, but because I was born a free American and that the prior restraint clause protected my right.

I know better now. Idiots out there incapable of not perverting their rights have changed that and I am willing to curtail my rights accordingly until gun deaths in this country get reduced to those of other highly armed countries - like Israel, Switzerland and Canada - all highly armed with automatic rifles and very low gun violence and murder rates.

Get rid of the cowboys and curtail their ownership and the rest of us can own, but it'll take national registration and regulation of guns and idiots.

[Marengo]

29. You are suggesting curtailing constitutional rights based on belief? If thats the case, you have...

More in common with fascists then Democrats. At any rate, in 2015 more people were murdered with knives and other cutting instruments than rifles by a wide margin. More were also murdered by blunt force weapons as well. Based on the raw data, seems knife and hammer owners are more of a public threat than those who have rifles. How about we register them as well?

Additionally, you never had the right to own any type of weapon you pleased. That you ever believed such a thing, and seem to use it as a base of your current position indicates how far out of touch of reality you are. Like it or not, the 2A IS an individual right, not “so called” as you characterize it. Subject to regulation, but it can’t be denied for political reason as you desire.

[marble falls]

31. That's a lame argument: I'm a Nazi. The Nazi's curtail your right to drink and drive when you ....

drink and drive, right?

Funny how you think my rights are extreme and yours are normal. My reasons for curtailing weapons has to do with how many murders and mass shootings that occur in the US. That you believe that this murder is something I have to accept as the price I have to pay so you can run packing, locked and loaded indicates the extremist is you.

We curtail all sorts of freedoms in the name of public safety, like lawn darts which never ever killed in total what one small mass shooting does by itself. Sorry, but we this week are recognizing an outrage from five years and four or five even larger outrages ago, where 20 first graders were murdered by someone with a garbage gun.

Clarify for me who's the Nazi here: the kids, the parents of those kids, or the gun humpers who claims those kids are merely broken eggs of that omelette the 2nd Amendment has become?

How do you feel about those Nazis who require pilots and train engineers to subject themselves to mandatory pee tests? Don't they violate 5th Amendment rights from self incrimination? There's a lot fewer killed in plane crashes and train wrecks than preventable gun violence.

There's no arguing with a gun "enthusiast" so you get the last word. Public safety concerns trump your right to own guns until there's a way to better insure public safety; until there's a way to get a safer selection of weapons into the hands of only those qualified to own them.

By the way, the gun I used to own (beside a shot gun for pheasant hunting) was an AK-47 7.62cal - a stupid weapon as well as are most .233cal weapons in general. That AK was shit hammered and buried. If I don't want you to have one, I won't have one either.

[Marengo]

33. You stated a desire to disarm people based on their opinion and nothing else.

So, yeah, Nazi-like. You said it, why can’t you own it?

[paleotn]

32. Major Godwin fail!

[Marengo]

34. The Democratic Party platform advocates disarming

People who do not hold the correct attitude towards gun control?

[Marengo]

46. Where did you run off to? You have a question awaiting an answer.

[mpcamb]

12. So, what % of people own guns?

Gun ownership in the US is low 30s%. 40% live with someone's gun in the home.
I checked several sources on those numbers. They seem accurate.
So half of the 1/3 of Americans who own guns- ~1/6th -are driving the bus on this issue.
At least, so far.

[Scruffy1]

14. The numbers I found are that about 3% of Americans own half the guns.n/t.

[davepdx]

40. I wish I could rec your response.

The headline should say something along the lines of a majority of a minority...

[maxsolomon]

13. Because they have zero answers otherwise.

All they can see is slippery slopes.

Regulate the Unorganized Militia. NOW.

[Blue_Tires]

18. No big shock, many of them have repeatedly said as much in the media

and it *IS* one of the official NRA talking points...

[SansACause]

19. Just like Ebola

"Nothin' you can do to stop Ebola, folks" said no scientist ever.

[SunSeeker]

21. Those "roughly half" of gun owners are fucking sick idiots.

[msongs]

22. dead people matter not to the gun crowd. after all that's what guns are for nt

[Vinca]

23. I imagine their views change when their loved one is on a slab.

[diva77]

43. interesting finding from Pew Research semi-related to your comment

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/22/key-takeaways-on-americans-views-of-guns-and-gun-ownership/

June 22, 2017
Key takeaways on Americans’ views of guns and gun ownership

By Ruth Igielnik and Anna Brown
SNIP
Many Americans say they know someone who has been shot. A significant share of Americans (44%) say they personally know someone who has been shot, either accidentally or intentionally. Gun owners are more likely than non-gun owners to know someone who has been shot (51% vs. 40% of non-owners). And black adults (57%) are more likely than whites (43%) or Hispanics (42%) to know someone who falls into this category. About a quarter of Americans (23%) say they or someone in their family have been threatened or intimidated by someone using a gun. Again, blacks are more likely than whites to say they have had this experience: About a third of blacks (32%) say they or someone in their family has been threatened or intimidated by someone with a gun, compared with 20% of whites. About a quarter of Hispanics (24%) say this has happened to them or to someone else in their family. Gun owners are no more likely to have experienced this than non-gun owners.
SNIP

===========
I wish they had asked about what you posted

[Vinca]

44. I don't know what's so interesting to them about whether or not you know someone who has

been shot unless you ask questions about whether you think everybody and their crazy brother should have a gun. I think Americans have pretty much figured out they're potential victims every time they leave the house (and sometimes in the house).

[christx30]

24. These are the same people that think the occasional

terrorist attack is the reason we need to have a muslim ban in the country.

[mahigan]

25. Not buying it

The US is around the top of the list with about 100 firearms for every 100 people. Canada, Germany and France (and 7 other countries including Finland, Norway and Austria) are near the top of the list with about 30- 35 firearms per 100 people. I think all three of those countries qualify as "free societies". I have owned firearms for many decades and, while there are a few things I would like to see less restricted, I have never felt unable to do anything I have really wanted to do with firearms.

The firearm-related homicide rates per 100,000 population per year are 0.38 for Canada, 0.49 for France, 0.07 for Germany and 3.60 for the US. The US has 3 times as many firearms as the other 3 countries but 10 times the average firearm-related homicide rate for those 3 countries. (Sources: [link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimated_number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country| and [link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate|

Where are all the mass shooting in those three countries that are supposed to be the price of being free societies? The mass shootings seem far more related to culture than the availability of firearms.

[LiberalLovinLug]

26. What a f'd up poll - just the way they word it

They ask impossible questions, how can they even get an honest answer?

Like the choice between:

1. We have to accept them as part of a free society

or

2. We can prevent if we really try


OF COURSE WE HAVE TO ACCEPT THEM AS PART OF A FREE SOCIETY! That goes without saying. We can never 100% get rid of mental illness and radical parental or other organizational indoctrination, PTSD from military service or other traumatic events. And that this will adversely affect at least a few people who will resort to engaging it this type of behavior.

We also have to accept there will be motor vehicle deaths as a consequence of having the freedom to drive a car.

And the choice is between that impossible scenerio and..."We can prevent if we really try"?
A better phrase, a more realistic phrase, would be "Can we reduce, significantly even, the amount of mass shootings, if we try"



What this type of wording does is force people to leap to either impossible extreme. It only further seals the opinions of gun nuts. I can see them now as they answer thinking..."Stupid libtards think makin it hard fer decent folk like me to get a gun is gonna make mass shootins never happen again!"

[yallerdawg]

27. This is what they mean when they say:

"Freedom isn't free."

Thousands meaninglessly slaughtered is the cost.



As of today (NOT COUNTING SUICIDES):



http://www.gunviolencearchive.org/

[diva77]

41. Wow! That's just for 2017 so far???

[gibraltar72]

28. Half of gun owners

isn't even a majority of gun owners! Why in the hell should we have minority rule in a so called democracy??

[Kingofalldems]

30. Yes, but they do send thoughts and prayers to the victims.

[Judi Lynn]

36. "something a free society must accept?" That society would not be free, would it?

How long does it take these drooling idiots to grow the #### up, anyway?

[billh58]

37. The Second Amendment

does not give us the right to kill and maim each other. That is the premise that the NRA, Second Amendment absolutist anti-social misfits use to make these kind of asinine claims.

[Paladin]

38. Nothing new about this.

Pro-gun militants long ago determined that significant numbers of strangers dying, in exchange for their virtually unfettered access to firearms, is a trade-off they are more-than-ready to accept.

[treestar]

42. they tried not to admit it

but now they have to.

Until they are affected.

[Skittles]

45. THOSE are the gun humping cowards