A poll released by Gallup on October 17 shows Americans support requiring every would-be gun purchaser to pass the same background check that the Las Vegas attacker passed to get his guns.
This is the same background check the Alexandria attacker (June 14, 2017) and Orlando Pulse attacker (June 12, 2016) passed to acquire their guns. In fact, it is the same background check Gabby Giffords attacker (January 8, 2011), the Aurora movie theater gunman (June 20, 2012), and both Fort Hood attackers (April 2, 2014 and November 5, 2009) passed to get their firearms too.
Despite this, Gallup shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans favor expanding background checks so that more Americans have to pass them to acquire their guns.
The Gallup poll also shows that three out of four respondents supported a “30-day waiting period” for all gun purchases and requiring gun owners to register their firearms with the police. Ironically, these are the very kinds of laws that normally follow the implementation of universal background checks anyway
For example, California adopted universal background checks in the early 1990s. Thereafter they added a waiting period for gun purchases, a requirement for all guns to be registered with the state government, and firearm confiscation laws. None of these laws prevented the shooting in downtown Fresno (April 18, 2017), the ambush killing of two Palm Springs police officers (October 8, 2016), the murder-suicide on UCLA’s gun-free campus (June 1, 2016), or the San Bernardino attack (December 2, 2015), among other firearm-related incidents.
The insidious nature of controls like gun registration may be the reason why the base of support for such action lies with non-gun owners rather than Americans who own guns. For example, Gallup found that 52 percent of gun owners opposed registration but 82 percent of non-gun owners supported it.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.