With the Trump administration’s law-and-order push showing America’s crime problem is clearly not the fault of lawfully armed citizens, gun-control groups are freaking out. If they can’t blame American freedom and law-abiding armed citizens for crime, then their anti-Second Amendment narratives fall apart.
Nevertheless, the gun-control group Giffords thinks they see a window of opportunity for their anti-freedom messaging to resonate with voters. According to Politico, Giffords sent a “private polling memo that shows potential openings” on gun-control policies “to House Democrats and their campaign committees … .”
Giffords is arguing that if the narrative can just be semantically spun in their favor, then voters will still blame law-abiding citizens for violent crime. If so, their gun-control candidates can still win in battleground districts.
The gun-control groups are working overtime to spin this issue because, when it comes to which party voters trust more on crime, the answer is undeniably pro-Second Amendment candidates and politicians; indeed, pro-freedom Republicans regularly lead anti-gun Democrats by double digits—this includes a 20-point margin in a Reuters/Ipsos poll and a 22-point lead in a Washington Post/Ipsos poll.
Giffords, nevertheless, apparently has convinced itself that if anti-gun politicians lean in on their gun-control agenda, they can deceive enough voters to win. To make this case, they handed out a private poll sponsored by Giffords and House Majority Forward, a nonprofit aligned with House Democratic leadership, to anti-Second Amendment members of Congress. This poll reportedly shows that just 38% of the voters in swing districts favor gun-control-promoting politicians on crime. But that same poll also allegedly shows that anti-Second Amendment politicians can erase this disadvantage by playing up certain gun-control falsehoods.
This “battleground-district survey” does begin with a bleak assessment of the prospects of politicians who distract from their anti-freedom and revolving-door-justice policies by blaming the rights of law-abiding citizens. “Voters also reported preferring Republicans to Democrats with preventing and reducing crime and cracking down on violent crime—gaps that grew among swing voters,” reported Politico.
Giffords, however, sees hope in deception. They claim the voters they polled swung toward anti-gun politicians when presented with loaded questions about gun-control policies, such as “universal” background checks and illegal gun trafficking (which, of course, no one is for).
The Giffords poll also suggested that voters could be swayed by political rhetoric about the Trump administration’s attempts to roll back gun-control regulations and about politicians’ support from pro-gun groups.
Giffords found that, with enough spin to lead people to the “right” answers, the anti-gun politicians can negate the pro-freedom advantage. They even “shrunk the GOP advantage on preventing violent crime to one point,” said Politico.
“Giffords, House Majority Forward and Global Strategy Group pollsters are in the midst of … angling to revamp Democrats’ crime messaging, urging candidates to project toughness on crime and campaign against traditionally law-and-order-focused Republicans for making cities less safe by slashing federal funding,” says this article on the leaked poll.
“We do have to actually say” that we “do not want people to get shot or stabbed or carjacked,” said Emma Brown, Giffords’ executive director, reported Politico.
Obviously, this honest correction on the criminal-justice system is inconvenient for gun-control groups. Giffords is arguing that if politicians who are opposed to this basic freedom can get their sound bites right, if they can only massage the narrative just so, then they can still, despite all the evidence on display from the law-and-order initiatives in places like the District of Columbia, convince majorities of voters in battleground districts to vote away their freedom.
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