President Joe Biden and his re-election campaign team oddly continue to make his “successes” on “gun violence” a top messaging priority as the 2024 campaign begins to ramp up. At speeches, the president bellows “We’re not done yet!” and vows to “continue the job” of implementing more gun control restrictions that only penalize law-abiding Americans and are ignored by criminals.
He launched a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, staffed by former gun control activists, and his administration continues to bludgeon and suffocate lawful firearm retailers under “zero tolerance.” President Biden did, after all, call the firearm industry “the enemy” when he launched his campaign for the presidency in 2019. Since then, he’s done nearly everything he can possibly think of, including numerous executive orders, to carry out his mission to destroy the Second Amendment and the industry that provides the means to exercise that Constitutional right.
A big problem for President Biden, according to new polling, is that not very many people approve of his efforts. In fact, Americans of all stripes disapprove of what the president has done and in an election that will come down to very small margins in a handful of swing states, it’s clear the #GUNVOTE will matter in 2024.
Low Water Mark
The new polling, released by Youguv and The Economist, made one thing abundantly clear: voters on all sides are overwhelming in their disapproval of President Biden on how he has handled firearm issues during his presidency. That’s why the president’s continued focus on pushing more gun control is a headscratcher for someone clinging on for his political life.
According to the poll, just 29 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s performance on guns, marking a seven-point decline from the last time the poll was conducted in February. The 54 percent disapproval mark is up four points from the same previous poll.
“The latest results, taken from a poll conducted between March 24th and the 26th, put Biden at his lowest approval rating on guns since last summer,” analysis from The Reload revealed. “Biden’s poor marks on gun policy come as he continues to pursue an agenda of restricting access to firearms.”
The crosstabs of the in-depth polling spell more troubles for President Biden, demonstrating further that his “whole-of-government” approach of attacking the firearm industry has been an abysmal failure and should be abandoned. Voter disapproval of the president’s efforts on gun restrictions is common across gender, race, age and income. Unsurprisingly, only five percent of self-described Republicans and 24 percent of independents approve of President Biden’s job on guns. But only 25 percent of Democrats disapprove of his handling of guns as well.
All of this voter dissatisfaction of President Biden’s handling of guns and crime is coming at a time when the firearm industry is seeing historic levels of gun purchases, from all demographics. This mirrors the polling, too, as the vast majority of Americans said they viewed guns as a vital issue. More than 80 percent of respondents said the issue was important to them. As more Americans saw their local officials implement defund the police policies and bail reform soft-on-crime laws that jeopardized their safety, they turned to the Second Amendment and chose to purchase firearms. Over the past several years, nearly 30 percent of all gun buyers have been first-time purchasers, according to NSSF industry data.
Allies Getting Angrier
President Biden likes to blame Congress when officeholders block his gun control activist agenda. But that’s the way the system was designed to work and elected officials are standing up for their bosses – the voters. This has meant the president has been forced to do more on his own, through executive orders and policy directives, to try and assuage his gun control activist supporters.
Even his “Fine-I’ll-go-it-my-own-way” attitude isn’t placating the president’s gun control doubters. Within the historically low approval ratings is baked-in dissatisfaction from gun control allies who don’t believe President Biden has done enough.
National gun control groups have repeatedly made their displeasure with the administration known. “He hasn’t really been a leader,” has been the sentiment from March for Our Lives. Giffords gun control has said, “We would like to see more from the Biden administration.” Gun control activist Fred Guttenberg previously put the administration on notice regarding their powers of executive action, saying “They’ve done probably, through executive action, not everything they can do…” Even Manuel Oliver, whose son was tragically killed in the Parkland, Florida, high school shooting and supports gun control efforts, protested at The White House during a ceremony when the president was announcing more executive actions on gun control. Oliver was angry the president hadn’t done more.
“You have to do more!” shouted Oliver at the president.
Voters Watching
As the campaign slogs on heading into the summer, voters continue to watch what’s happening around them. In numerous major cities across the country, crime is still high and Americans from all backgrounds and across all demographics continue to jump off the fence to take ownership of their Second Amendment rights.
The blistering firearm sales pace has kept up with the demand, reaching 56 months in a row of more than 1 million FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verifications processed at the retail counter. That includes large percentages of African American buyers – specifically African American women – and Hispanic American gun buyers as well. Asian Americans are flocking to the gun counter. Liberal gun owner groups have become popular as they hold group meetings at neighborhood gun ranges. Jewish Americans have purchased firearms in large numbers as antisemitic threats and attacks have picked up, especially in the months since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack into Israel.
Large numbers of these constituencies have usually, predictably, voted Democratic. But they’ve also recognized what being a responsible and educated firearm owner can do for the safety and security of one’s family and business. Through this process, they’ve experienced firsthand how gun control laws impact their ability to purchase and possess firearms legally and how criminals continue – and will continue – to ignore those laws.
All these aspects have converged to give President Biden the historically low approval ratings on his handling of firearms, gun control and crime. As the numbers of new gun owners continue to grow still ahead of election day, the #GUNVOTE could be the difference in who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., come next January.
Larry Keane is SVP for Government and Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary and General Counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
2 Responses
“He launched a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, staffed by former gun control activists”
nope, let me correct that for you Larry, since none of these are actually “former” gun control activists it should read…
“He launched a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, staffed by gun control activists”
…. that, the tax payer is paying for, and these people are given defacto ‘elected official and title status’ creating policy and activity that is Marxist Soci- alist communism in intent.
In short, essentially Biden created a ‘Ministry of Rights Prevention’. Its not just the 2A they are going after, people need to understand that… its also the 1st, 4th, 5th and eventually the rest. Going after the 2A is so they can establish a precedent that government can determine what a right is, or if it even exists, or control who can or can not exercise a right – ’cause they say so. Without the 2A right and gun ownership ’cause they say so’, the people become defenseless in a meaningful way, so then ‘government’ is free to simply do as they please without fear of meaningful resistance from the people.
This is not a new trick people. History is full of examples of this, the ‘government’ creating a ‘weaponized against the people government’ and it always starts with specific things ‘bad’ and they build on that to eventually make a people defenseless to subjugate them. Its the basic Marxist Soci- alist plan to eventually install communism. Its all through history…the Romans did it, Feudal Europe did it (and it still exists there today in its modern day form with lots of window dressing), Hitler did it, Mao did it, …. lots of others that did it, and now Biden is doing it and dressing it up with a fancy title to call it “White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention”
“National gun control groups have repeatedly made their displeasure with the administration known. ”
These groups had the false impression that Biden could use executive orders and his office to simply negate the Constitution and gain control over it. Yeah, they call it various things like ‘common sense gun safety’ and ‘common sense gun control’ and all sorts of things, but what they are really doing is trying to over come and defeat the Constitution to control it and mold it into their image.
People don’t realize its really not about guns, guns are not the problem. Their claims of ‘guns are responsible for the crime and violence’ are overall false. Annually, there are over 7 million violent crimes against victims where the perpetrator uses a non-firearm weapon of some type – a whole range of crimes … domestic violence, sexual partner violence, child abuse, rape and sexual assault, assault, murder, armed robbery, and more…. there is no arrest AND prosecution for these perpetrators thus these crimes never show up in stats and the perpetrators are less likely to be caught and incarcerated. While comparatively with that number of non-firearm violent crimes, for all violent crime with a gun that show up in stats its 0.5% and in that 0.5% is represented less than 12% of the overall criminal population in the United States and almost 90% of those criminals are from only 6% of the U.S. population in the Black male demographic.
Yet, you never see a national gun control group or the democrats or Biden address these non-firearm violent crimes despite the data for them being all over the place and known to them even though they don’t make it into stats of the FBI for violent crimes because there was no arrest AND prosecution. Ya see them only focused on guns, makes ya wonder why with all their claims of ‘safety’ and ‘community safety’ and ‘keeping people safe’. Well, its not ’cause guns, they don’t care about non-firearm violent crime because its the law abiding gun owners they are after by seeking control over the Constitution to mold it into their image to enable a Marxist Soci- alist country that Biden promised them where they get to be in charge and make policy and decisions and we see part of that today with the ‘White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention’ and DEI. But the problem is despite Biden thinking he would have monarch like powers to simply get rid of the Constitution by molding it into a Marxist Soci- alist image just like the anti-gun want, he ran into those pesky law abiding Second Amendment defenders that started fighting for our constitution and country through the courts, those defenders Biden thought he could simply overrun and do away with by executive order and creating unconstitutional defacto law through his now-compromsed ATF.
The national gun control groups are not pleased that Biden has not delivered to them control over the Constitution.
But how do we know these non-firearm violent crimes exist? Its because there are literally thousands of police reports daily across the United States where these crimes reside and these can be researched.
But, its also exposed publicly — For example > https://www.rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence… “On average, there are 463,634 victims (age 12 or older) of rape and sexual assault each year in the United States.”
Ya think all of these were carried out because the criminal attacker used a firearm?
(https://www.rainn.org/statistics/perpetrators-sexual-violence) “Personal weapons—such as hands, feet or teeth—are used against victims of sexual violence in about 2 out of 3 cases.” …. in 11% of cases of these attacks a firearm was used 6% of the time, a knife used 4% of the time, and other weapons 1% of the time…but about 66% of the time “Personal weapons—such as hands, feet or teeth” were used. Or in other words, there are annually almost 460,000 criminal assaults for purposes of rape and sexual assault where the perpetrator used a non-firearm weapon.
Now think about all the other categories of violent crime. If only these national gun control groups could take some of that money they get to pay their leaders hundreds of thousands of dollars so they can continue to live nice life styles, and the millions they spend screaming their false ‘guns bad, the reason for everything bad is guns’…. and ya know, maybe put that into say lobbying for bills to put criminals in jail, and actual ‘justice reform’ that increases capability to be able to investigate and catch these non-firearms violent criminals and arrest AND prosecute them and put them in prison away from society.
non-firearm weapons in violent crime are used over 1000 times more than firearms.
firearms are not the problem – criminal people and Biden and democrat politicians and national gun control groups are the problem.