Déjà vu: Majority oppose “assault weapons” ban in WaPo/ABC poll, too

A second national poll from a major media outlet in the past week has found a majority of Americans now oppose a ban on so-called assault weapons even after the New York Times published an editorial on its front page opposing it.

But in a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday morning, just 45 percent want to ban the weapons, down from 80 percent in 1994.

Liberals, Democrats, women, people with a postgraduate degree, and people older than 65 are still more likely than not to say they support banning assault weapons.

By a 47 percent to 42 percent margin, Americans also said they think encouraging more people to legally carry guns is a better response to terrorism than passing stricter gun control laws.

Ouch. That was in fact the opposite argument made by Barack Obama in the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attack that left 14 dead and two dozen wounded.

These trends leave just seven basic demographic groups in which majorities still support banning assault weapons: women, Northeasterners, seniors, post-graduates, liberals, Democrats and blacks.

Support for such a ban has decreased in the past two decades, though a majority still backed one as recently as two years ago.

The poll also shows that only 22 percent of Americans are confident in the government’s ability to stop a lone wolf attack, and 77 percent of Americans are skeptical. But views on the government’s limitations, and on arming citizens, relate strongly to attitudes on banning assault weapons.

Americans express far less confidence in the country’s ability to thwart attacks by individuals than foreign terrorist groups. When asked about larger-scale attacks, most Democrats say they are confident in federal prevention measures, while most Republicans are doubtful.

But only 22 percent believe that “lone wolf” attacks can be stopped. Back in October, in the wake of a summer that included the murder of nine people in an historic African-American Church in Charleston, South Carolina and a mass shooting in southern OR, polling from Gallup and CNN showed both an increase in the number of Americans that supported allowing people allowing to carry a concealed weapon in public and increased opposition to some forms of gun control that had previously enjoyed public support. But there’s no split between young and old Americans on whether gun control is the right approach to terrorism.