Fewer blame violence on easy access to guns now than two years ago
Steve Watson
Infowars.com
Sept 20, 2013
Significantly less Americans believe stricter gun laws are necessary now than In December 2012, after the Newtown shooting, even in the wake of the Navy Yard incident this week.
In a poll conducted by Gallup, 49 percent said gun laws should be more strict, with 13 percent saying they should be less strict.
Those numbers have starkly changed from just nine months ago, when 58 percent said gun laws should be more strict and 6 percent said they should be less strict.
The numbers reveal that even in the aftermath of a shooting in Washington, D.C. that killed 12 people and the gunman this week, public support for another gun control push is not there.
The poll revealed that the vast majority of Americans, 80 percent, believe that mental illness is an overriding factor in mass shootings.
Despite a blanket refusal to cover the issue by the mainstream media, drug use was also pinpointed as a factor, with 66 percent saying they believed drugs could lead to such gun violence in some form.
Violent movies, video games and music was singled out by 56 percent as a perceived cause of the shootings.
Forty percent of those polled said that easy access to guns was to blame “a great deal” for the shootings, however that figure represents a decrease by 6 points since January 2011.
The spread of extremist viewpoints on the Internet was named as a factor by 57 percent, while insufficient building security was also named as a factor by 58 percent.
Only 37 percent of those polled believed that inflammatory rhetoric from prominent political commentators could be blamed for mass shootings.
“The current results support longstanding evidence from Gallup polling that Americans believe more can be done on the mental health side.” Gallup’s write up states.
“Americans are more likely to believe the mental health system is to blame than gun laws,” the report continues, noting that “…support for stricter gun laws is down from the surge of support seen right after Newtown.”
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Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones’ Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.
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