Majority backs ban on assault weapons

A survey released last week shows a majority of Americans are in favor of continuing the ban on assault weapons, and in households with National Rifle Association members, the numbers were about evenly split.

The survey, which interviewed 28,446 persons from Oct. 7 to April 19, shows 71 percent of people in households without guns support extending the law, as do 64 percent of those in households with guns.

The University of Pennsylvania’s National Annenberg Election Survey says 46 percent of respondents in households with NRA members support continuing the 10-year-old ban.

But the NRA, which had not seen the survey until it was sent to the organization by a reporter for The Washington Times, said the information regarding its members is erroneous.

“There is a glaring error in how they claim to speak to NRA households,” said NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam. “They say they spoke to households with an NRA member, but all they did was talk to households that claim to have an NRA member. They don’t say that they talked to the NRA member in the home.”

Among respondents with an NRA member in the household, according to the survey, “46 percent favored extending the ban and 49 percent were opposed. The difference between 46 and 49 percent was within the survey’s margin of sampling error.”

The margin of error for the survey was one percentage point, but for those with an NRA member in the home, it was three percentage points.

An NRA official said it is important to note that none of the survey questions specified which guns are characterized as assault weapons under the ban.

“If you ask the average American what an assault weapon is, they think of a machine gun, which have been banned and the sales regulated since about 1934,” said the official.

The NRA holds the position that semiautomatic versions of automatic assault weapons should not be included in the ban.

The assault weapons ban, signed into law by President Clinton in 1994, expires Sept. 13. Senate Democrats, led by Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, attempted to extend the ban last month by amending a bill to ban civil lawsuits against law-abiding gun manufacturers and dealers.

The gun immunity bill would have banned civil wrongful-death lawsuits against gun makers brought by the families of shooting victims.

Republican leaders in Congress, led by Sen. Larry E. Craig of Idaho, sabotaged the bill after Democrats amended it to include an extension of the ban, mandatory trigger locks and closure of the gun show loophole.

The bill failed by a 90-8 vote and Senate Republicans have not brought up any new measures related to guns or gun control, although President Bush has said he supports the ban and would sign an extension if it reached his desk.

Also in the survey, 58 percent of the households without guns said the federal government should do more to restrict “the kind of guns that people can buy.” Another 21 percent said the government should do as much as it is doing now. Nineteen percent said the government should do less or nothing about restricting gun purchases.

In gun-owning households, 38 percent favored more legislation, 28 percent were happy with what already exists and 32 percent said the government should do less or nothing about gun purchases.

In the households with NRA members, 23 percent said they wanted more statutory measures enacted, 27 percent favored the status quo and 48 percent said they wanted the government to do less or nothing.