New decades-long trends were revealed by Gallup this week, and they show young women have moved further and further away from gun-rights advocates on policy. But that’s not the only bad news for advocates.
Contributing Writer Jake Fogleman dives into the details to uncover the larger movement at play.
We also saw the presidential race solidify this week. We’re far enough out from several potential-game-changing events and close enough to the election that it’s fair to say neither candidate is going to change their tune on guns. I explain it all in my analysis piece. Plus, Cam Edwards of Bearing Arms joins the podcast to give his take on where the race is at today.
Analysis: Do Gun-Rights Advocates Have a Gender Problem or Something Worse? [Member Exclusive]
By Jake Fogleman
Newly published research suggests young women have moved substantially to the left over the last two decades, driven in no small part by their increasing dissatisfaction with America’s gun laws. While those findings alone should trouble gun-rights advocates, the numbers point to trouble beyond a single demographic.
Last week, Gallup published a study of more than 20 years of polling data that backs up the popular wisdom that young women are indeed moving left at a rapid clip. From 2001-2007, Gallup found an average of 28 percent of women aged 18-29 identified as liberal, just three percentage points higher than young men. By 2017-2024, the most recent period surveyed, Gallup found an average of 40 percent of young women identified as liberal, a full 15 points higher than men of the same age.
Gun policy has driven a lot of that shift. Since the years of the Obama presidency, young women have become three percent more likely to say that handguns should be banned, 16 points more likely to say gun laws should be stricter, and 21 percent more likely to say that they are “very dissatisfied” with the nation’s gun laws. That’s the biggest single shift in dissatisfaction registered among any issue tracked across all sexes and age groups.
Overall, Gallup identified gun policy as among the top three issues that women between the ages of 18 and 29 have moved most leftward on over the last decade or so, the others being abortion and the environment. That suggests that gun-rights supporters have a particular issue on their hands with reaching young women. While there is truth to that conclusion, it risks overlooking a more sweeping trend at play.
Though young women led the pack in souring on America’s current gun laws, women over 30 were still 11 percent more likely to say that they are “very dissatisfied” with the nation’s gun laws now than they were during the Obama years. Men 30 and up are also now five percent more likely to say they are “very dissatisfied.”
Young men did not register a change in dissatisfaction. However, the number agreeing that gun laws should be stricter did increase by ten percentage points. A majority of young men supported stricter gun laws on average through the Trump and Biden years, whereas only four in ten felt the same way in both the Bush and Obama years.
In other words, though it appears to be more pronounced among younger women, there has been a broader increase in gun-control support since the Bush and Obama years. It’s not a single age group, gender, or demographic that gun advocates should be concerned about.
It’s not immediately clear how much this will impact the 2024 election as opposed to the long-term prospects of new gun restrictions.
It is still true that older voters turn out at higher rates than younger voters. However, it is also true that women turn out at a higher rate than men, and the gap in turnout is actually more pronounced among younger voters. If dissatisfaction with the status quo is any indication, Gallup’s poll suggests young women may also be more intent on voting based on gun policy. So, they may be more motivated to vote in races with major gun policy ramifications, whether on ballot measures or for particular candidates.
At the same time, some of this effect has already been baked in to our electrical politics.
The floor for public support for gun control among young women has always been much higher than for other groups, even before that bloc’s recent and much-discussed shift to the left. Despite trending in similar directions, Gallup found that young women are still 23 points more likely than young men to favor stricter gun laws.
According to Gallup, support for stricter gun laws among young women was at its nadir during the Obama years, yet it was still at 58 percent. Increasing supermajority support for stricter gun laws among one voting bloc may not be decisive.
A broad-based societal shift in the same direction stands to pose a much bigger problem for gun-rights supporters. While the shift among young women has garnered most of the attention, the numbers show that broader shift is underway.
Podcast: Has the 2024 Gun Debate Already Ended? (Ft. Cam Edwards) [Member Early Access]
By Stephen Gutowski
This week, we’re turning our attention to the presidential race.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris seem to have found their message on guns and are sticking to it. Assassination attempts, a major school shooting, and the race tightening haven’t moved voters. Neither has any of that moved the candidates themselves.
So, we’ve got Bearing Arms editor Cam Edwards back on the show to look at where everything has landed. He agreed there’s little reason to think the campaigns are going to change course on message or intensity at this point. But he argued both sides are taking a flawed approach.
Cam said Trump ought to do more to try and entice gun owners to turn out for him rather than just talking about how he doesn’t think they will show up. On the other hand, he argued Harris trying to parry claims she’ll take Americans’ guns by emphasizing her own gun ownership felt inauthentic and didn’t do enough to counteract some of the farther left positions she’s staked out on guns in the past.
You can listen to the show on your favorite podcasting app or by clicking here. Video of the episode is available on our YouTube channel. An auto-generated transcript is available here. Reload Members get access on Sunday, as always. Everyone else can listen on Monday.
A free 30-day trial of The Dispatch is available here.
Plus, Contributing writer Jake Fogleman and I talk about new polling data showing voters trust Kamala Harris more on the issue of “gun violence” despite ranking the issue low on their list of priorities this election. We also talk about the political implications of young women moving way to the left on the issue of guns. Finally, we wrap up with a discussion of a new federal bill to force the US Military to initiate state red flag orders, the lack of gun policy ballot measures this November, and a new state-level legislative coalition launched by the national gun control groups.
Analysis: The 2024 Fight Over Guns Has Stagnated [Member Exclusive]
By Stephen Gutowski
The presidential campaign’s debate over gun policy and the emphasis (or lack thereof) on it is unlikely to change from this point through November.
Over the past month, we’ve seen a high-profile mass shooting and a second assassination attempt against Donald Trump. We’ve also seen Kamala Harris give an extended interview on gun policy. Yet, there hasn’t been any movement on guns from either candidate, and Americans haven’t moved the issue up their priority list.
The race has stagnated and, barring an extreme event, will probably stay right where it is on guns.
That’s driven by a seeming lack of voter interest. All of the polls to ask about guns since the Apalachee High School shooting in Winder, Georgia, and the debate have born this out. Voters in the latest ABC News and Ipsos poll trusted Harris over Trump on guns, while those in the latest Fox News poll favored Trump. But both showed Americans view guns as a mid-tier issue at best.
That remained true in multiple other post-debate polls. A Yahoo News and YouGov poll found just five percent viewed guns as their top issue, putting it sixth out of nine issues. Another poll from the Angus Reid Institute found that 19 percent said guns were an issue they cared most about, also making it sixth out of 11 issues.
Then there’s the candidates themselves. They’ve given no indication they plan to adjust their approach to guns.
Another would-be assassin threatened Trump. Thankfully, this one didn’t get as far as the last. But it still presented further motivation for him to change his mind on guns, and he hasn’t.
While there was reason to think Trump could moderate on gun control after being shot himself, and there’s still reason to believe the assassination attempts could fuel a push down the line, he’s stuck with his previous approach. Now, that approach has mostly consisted of de-emphasizing gun-rights policy promises and emphasizing he’s doubtful of gun owners’ commitment to voting. But he has also repeatedly attacked Harris on her previous support for a mandatory buyback of AR-15s and similar firearms.
For her part, Harris has also stuck to her positions. At least the ones she adopted after taking over the top of the Democratic ticket. She’s now advocating for universal background checks, “red flag” laws, and a ban on the sale of “assault weapons.”
To get there, she had to walk back her 2019 support for that mandatory buyback Trump has keyed in on. She’s also refused to talk about her previous support for the handgun ban the Supreme Court overturned in 2008’s Heller decision and her certification of handgun microstamping requirement while she was California Attorney General. She’s also yet to personally address her newly-resurfaced 2007 comments warning lawful San Francisco gun owners she’d send law enforcement into their homes to check they are storing their guns safely, though a campaign spokesman told Fox News a federal court upheld the law she was discussing.
Perhaps the most telling part of her relatively lengthy discussion of gun policy with the National Association of Black Journalists was what she didn’t say. Despite being asked specifically about handguns and repeatedly pressed by NPR’s Tonya Mosley for specific policy details, she didn’t return to any of the further left positions on handguns she’d previously held. Instead, she stuck with calling for an assault weapons ban and universal background checks before making a diversion into mental health funding and community violence interruption programs.
Although, part of what she did say was telling. She began her answer on guns with the same tactic she has used every time she’s discussed the issue since the debate: emphasizing that she and her running mate are gun owners. She even used that line again during a fundraising event with Oprah, going so far as to say anyone who breaks into her house is getting shot before pivoting back to those same three gun policies she’s been running on.
Just as Trump has settled into a strategy of shaming gun owners into voting while telling them Harris will take their guns, Harris has decided to tell everyone who’ll listen that she’s a gun owner who just wants universal background checks, red flag laws, and an assault weapons ban. Meanwhile, voters writ large seem more interested in growing the economy, bringing down inflation, and protecting democracy, among other things.
Their attention could turn back to guns as a top issue over the next couple of weeks. However, given the events we just went through didn’t move the needle, it would likely take a huge story to move the candidates and voters alike.
That doesn’t mean guns don’t matter in the election, though. They could even be decisive.
Polling indicates 2024 will probably be as close as the last two elections. Harris has gained a bit in post-debate polling, but averages have Trump within a few points nationally and even closer in the swing states. Gun policy may not be a top priority for the majority of voters, but the vast majority of voters still think it’s an important issue overall.
Additionally, despite Trump’s recent take, gun owners have a strong record of turning out to vote on gun issues–which is why gun control policies tend to significantly underperform polling when put directly to voters in ballot initiatives.
That’s it for now.
I’ll talk to you all again soon.
Thanks,
Stephen Gutowski
Founder
The Reload
