Gallup describes the decline in support for assault weapons bans:
Gallop released results of a poll taken on the 5-9 of October, 2016. The last time they had asked the question was in 2012. Support for a ban is the lowest it has ever been, since the question was first asked.
What happened back in 2000 that could have reversed that trend?
The dot-com bubble (also known as the dot-com boom, the tech bubble, the Internet bubble, the dot-com collapse, and the information technology bubble[1]) was a historic speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2001 during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the Internet sector and related fields…
The collapse of the bubble took place during 1999–2001.
Implement resource restriction, and suddenly people become more conservative. As they do, their attitudes on all measures of ideology will trend conservative – to the point they will even begin to like assault weapons, and oppose their banning.
Imagine what will happen at the Apocalypse. The economic system collapses, possibly taking the larger and superfluous federal government with it, and just as government disappears, people’s attitudes adapt to want exactly that environment.
In some ways it will be horrifying, but in others it will be a glorious time. How you see it will most depend on whether you are r or K.
Since there is no check between 2000 and 2004, one could also argue increased concerns over safety. But that is just another aspect of r/K. r’s not being particularly concerned about safety either for others, off-spring or themselves. K’s being concerned about it for off-spring, themselves and others.
[…] When Did Support For Assault Weapon Bans Begin To Decline? […]
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. You’re not counting the explicit message from our betters that our only personal duty of note was to shop, i.e. we were on our own, and how dirty such data is based on the current Zeitgeist towards guns and gun control.
That changed quite a bit for many years after Gore lost the 2000 election on general gun control (and many other issues alone, i.e. if he’d made just one less screwup out of many), well, the Democrats got tired of getting schlonged in the voting booths from 1994-2000 and all but the most virulently anti-gun gave up on the topic until after they killed off their Blue Dogs in getting Obamacare passed. So there was much less of a push for it post-2000.
The more interesting period to look at, and one that comports with your thesis, is around the post-Sandy Hook period, when the gun controllers including Obama stopped pretending, and perhaps most importantly, the ineffective and dying old line gun control organizations like the Bradys’ got replaced by billionaire Bloomberg, for whom this is just one of many causes he’s funding out of pocket change. In this period we have well funded propaganda, serious political reversals for the first time in years, but the survey data continues to go counter, and of course we have the Great Recession as a greater source of resource restriction than the dot.com recession.
Think you are missing the elephant in the room here. Something ELSE happened between the 2000 and 2004 datapoints, a major non-economic event. It happened Sep 11, 2001. A fear of attacks inside the country probably had something to do with reevaluating the idea of being disarmed.
Very true, 9/11 was definitely K on steroids. I just like to point out the economic/resource aspect, and since the decline began in 2000, it seemed a good point too.
I like your theories and have actually been passing them along to others. I am also trying, in my late 40s and unarmed Canadian, to find hope that there are those who understand the realities. My friends, co-workers and family are so rabbit-ed out, that I cannot find anything in common with them. They’e the hockey and b-b-q worshippers.
And if I drift along without their presence and nothing happens, I will be happier in that I wasn’t reminded of traitors and cowards in my midst.
Thank you for the help spreading the word.
I go with the 2001 9/11 rather than the resource restriction because: If resource restriction made people conservative Greece and Portugal and Spain wouldn’t be the socialist fanatics they are. (and have been for as long as I know them).
2001 was a factor, but it clearly started in 2000, and I have another post somewhere here showing that right-leaning ideology as measured by a graph of the Conservative Policy Mood (combining family, economics, defense, and government philosophy) perfectly parallels the graph of the economic misery index. which itself parallels violent crime.
I think the issue in Greece is the resource restriction is still avoidable, in large part due to external forces intervening to save them from the consequences which would otherwise kick in. Let it all fall down, and you will have the Greeks of old.