ANALYSIS/OPINION:
America’s gun debate doesn’t break cleanly along red and blue political lines, though the media often makes it sound that way.
The truth about how Americans view their Second Amendment freedom is actually much more interesting than mere political affiliation. This is a reality check worth having just now, as New York[1]’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo[2], a Democrat, and many other politicians are now openly taking an extreme stance on this issue.
A Gallup poll shows that 27 percent of Democrats, 43 percent of Independents and 55 percent of Republicans say there is at least one gun in their home. Overall, Gallup reports that 42 percent of Americans say they have at least one gun in their home.
Now, any home or even marriage can have both Republicans and Democrats in it, so this doesn’t mean that 27 percent of Democrats own firearms. It does, however, mean that a lot of Democrats and Independents are influenced by the legal gun culture in America.
Still, Gallup also found that 24 percent of Democrats (88 percent of Republicans) have a favorable view of the NRA.
Now the math gets interesting. As of July 2018, Gallup polling found that 30 percent of Americans identified as Democratic, 26 percent identified as Republican and 41 percent as Independent. There are about 200 million registered voters in the United States. So okay, 30 percent of 200 million is 60 million Democrats. This means that, according to these numbers, 14.4 million Democrats in the United States say they like the NRA — that’s more than twice as many people as there are actual members of the NRA.
Many studies have found that more than 100 million Americans own at least one gun. Clearly, however you analyze the numbers, a lot of
