Recent polling suggests that Americans are very worried about gun violence. A Quinnipiac University poll taken from Oct. 26 to 30, right after the Maine shooting, found that 46 percent of registered voters worried about becoming a victim of a mass shooting themselves. That matches a high set in July 2022 in the wake of the Uvalde, Texas, shooting at Robb Elementary School, and is 9 points higher than a low of 37 percent in December 2017, the year the survey began asking the question.
Americans also feel pessimistic that anything will change. Indeed, 68 percent don’t believe the federal government will do anything to reduce gun violence within the next year, per the Quinnipiac poll.
I think the joke is old, like from the 80s, but the best way to get gun control would be for blacks and other people the right wing dislike to start arming and organizing. As long as guns remain almost exclusively a power fantasy and fetish of the right, especially certain kinds of men, changing anything is going to be difficult.
That’s what got Reagan to sign a gun control bill