NYT Poll: Support for Gun Regulations Tanks After Jihad Murders

The New York Times buried the big, post-San Bernardino news about the public’s attitude towards more federal gun-control:

What has shifted notably are attitudes on gun control. Only 44 percent of Americans favor a ban on assault weapons, 19 percentage points lower than after the mass shooting in Tucson in 2011. And while 51 percent favor stricter gun control in general, that is down from 58 percent in October.

To be precise, that is a seven point drop, or a loss of one-eighth in support, since October, on an issue that President Barack Obama considers to be critical.

Ten percent of respondents said, “Laws covering the sale of guns should be made… less strict,” and 36 percent said the laws should be “kept as they are now.”

The public’s current opinion is almost exactly the same as in June 2013, despite Obama’s continued effort to stigmatize and restrict gun-ownership.

The NYT report buried that shocking drop in support for gun-control in the second-last paragraph of a 25-paragraph story about the survey, which also showed Donald Trump at 35 percent support among GOP supporters.

That high support for Trump was buried in the 15th paragraph of the article.

The full survey can be viewed here.

The article suggests uncontrolled emotion among GOP voters is an explanation for the drop in support for gun-control and for Trump’s lead. “Many Republicans are filled with both fury and fear, and it is Mr. Trump who is most effectively tapping into these boiling anxieties,” it said.

The survey was nearly finished on Monday, prior to Trump announcing his temporary pause in Muslim immigration until the federal government gets an accurate understanding of the jihad threat.

The CBS/NYT “nationwide telephone poll was conducted Dec. 4 to 8 on cellphones and landlines with 1,275 adults, including 431 Republican primary voters and 384 Democratic primary voters. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all adults, six percentage points for Republican primary voters and six percentage points for Democratic primary voters,” according to the Times.