Poll: Expanded Background Checks Won't Curb Gun Violence

A Rasmussen poll released on April 2 shows that 51% of Americans believe expanding background checks won’t do anything to curb gun violence. In fact, six percent of those polled believe expanding background checks could contribute to increased gun violence. 

These numbers make sense when viewed beside the shrinking number of those who support background checks now, as compared with those who did when emotions were running high following the heinous crime at Sandy Hook Elementary. In the immediate aftermath of that tragedy, support for expanding background checks was at 88%, but that figure is now at 75% and falling.

As Breitbart News has reported numerous times since the tragedy in Newtown, CT, expanded background checks would not have deterred Adam Lanza in the least because he stole the guns he used to commit his crimes. 

This is why Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) speaks for more and more of his Senate colleagues–and 51% of the respondents in the Rasmussen poll–when he says that forcing private individuals to go “through a background check” before transferring their firearms “makes no sense.”