Based on a “representative survey” that questioned 310 adults in Washington and Oregon, two Pacific Northwest gun prohibition organizations have announced they will campaign for a ban on so-called “assault weapons” before their respective state legislatures in 2017.
Washington Ceasefire and Ceasefire Oregon sponsored the survey, which they say found 65 percent of the respondents favor a ban on the sale of new semi-autos and 63 percent supporting a ban on magazines that hold more than ten rounds. The poll, they say, has a 90 percent confidence level with a 5.6 percent margin of error.
Perhaps the most revealing aspect of the poll is that identified Democrats favor such a ban by a 9-to-1 spread (83% to 9%) and they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports a semi-auto ban. This reinforces the image of Democrats being the “party of gun control.”
In addition, only two percent of identified Democrats think “gun violence” is not an important problem in this country. Overall, only 11 percent of survey respondents reportedly think “gun violence” is not a “big problem.”
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The survey also reportedly found that 43 percent of respondents claiming to be gun owners also support the proposed ban. That means less than half of the people who apparently have any experience with firearms support such a ban.
According to Washington Ceasefire’s press release, “The impact of semi-automatic firearms has been validated by research by Everytown for Gun Safety which showed that when high capacity weapons are used in mass shootings, 13.3 people on average are shot, which is 155% higher than in other mass shootings.”
However, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, rifles of any kind, including semi-auto sport/utility rifles, are traditionally used in a fraction of homicides. And over the past three years for which data is available, that number has continued to decline.
But by targeting semi-automatic rifles, gun rights advocates contend that these anti-gun groups are fear mongering to push a political agenda, which is to ban guns and get the public accustomed to that.
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