Politics is rife with polls, but often these checks of public opinion are disingenuous. After a certain poll makes headlines, we often find out later—if we’re paying attention to the asterisks in the endlessly churning news cycle—that such-and-such poll over-sampled one political party or did something else to shape a certain narrative, and thereby influenced public opinion.
Even an honest attempt at polling can be very difficult, as subtle bias in the wording of the questions can massively change results.
This is why many pundits and news services now like to cite the RealClearPolitics average of polls. But, if some of the polls this average uses are skewed, the whole number is still suspect.
Outside of polls, there are telling trends that are too real to ignore; trends that will affect elections. The recent surge in gun sales is one such trend—though to be clear, it’s not just recent; actually, if you do a deep dive into these numbers you’ll find that gun sales have mostly been on a steady rise—with some notable spikes since about 2000.
It’s no accident that positive views on gun rights have been mostly ascending, politically and culturally, during this same period. As people buy guns, then go to gun ranges and shoot, these same people are less likely to buy into the anti-freedom mainstream-media narratives that are, nevertheless, still so prevalent today—the media won’t admit this, but this out-of-touch dishonesty from them must have a little to do with the decline of many mainstream news publications and channels.
All of this is setup for what Piers Morgan—yes, that English TV-news personality and former CNN host who has long loathed American freedom—recently tweeted about this current surge in gun sales: “BREAKING: Just when you thought the news couldn’t [be] more depressing...8.3 million guns have been sold in the United States since March, meaning 2020 is on course to be the biggest year for gun sales in American history.”
Morgan simply said what many in the media and politics who also loathe your freedom must be thinking. He thinks this trend is “depressing” because, it seems to me, this surge in gun sales is a clear political indicator that’s bigger than any poll. This is something that will continue to push the culture toward individual freedom.
This upward trend in gun ownership also indicates that Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, isn’t just out of touch on this issue; he is also directly opposed to allowing these millions of people to utilize their Second Amendment rights.
Biden is betting these people won’t vote for their freedom. He is hoping that they will vote against their own freedom. That’s a cynical view of the electorate. To come true, it also relies on continued mainstream-media misinformation on the issues related to guns in an age when the mainstream media’s power is clearly waning.
If Biden is hoping that a majority of the public won’t learn the truth about his positions on their freedom, that they won’t fear his very real gun-grabbing policies or that they won’t care (some might not think Biden’s gun bans, confiscations and registries will directly affect them), then he’ll need to avoid any fair or open debate, lest his voters learn the truth—which, of course, is exactly what he has been doing.
