They don’t want to join the NRA — and they don’t want you to be able to either. A recent poll by Rasmussen indicates that not only do Democrats dislike the NRA, they actually love the idea of barring membership to anyone. This approach, which would make joining or belonging to the NRA a crime, would effectively shutter the nation’s largest Second Amendment rights group and strike a powerful blow against freedom.
Democrat’s dislike of the Second Amendment and legal firearm ownership is no secret, but the latest poll adds a worrisome spin to the usual rhetoric. Rasmussen recently polled Democrats about guns, gun ownership and the NRA and the results had some surprises.
The Poll
To conduct the poll, researchers selected people who had indicated a strong likelihood of voting for Democrat candidates, and asked them the following 4 questions, listed verbatim below:
- “Do you have a very favorable, somewhat favorable, somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable impression of the National Rifle Association, also known as the NRA?”
- “Are NRA members more likely or less likely to commit a crime with a gun? Or is the level of gun crime by NRA members about the same as in the population at large?”
- “Following several recent mass shootings, officials in San Francisco have declared the NRA a domestic terrorist organization, although the decision has no specific impact on the NRA or its members. Do you favor or oppose declaring the NRA a terrorist organization in the community where you live?”
- “Should Americans be prohibited by law from belonging to pro-gun rights organizations like the NRA?”
Not surprisingly, the Democrats polled took a negative and sometimes aggressive approach to the existence of the NRA and its mission, going so far as to suggest banning it entirely.
NRA=Domestic Terror Group?
32% of respondents said that they would support a declaration that labeled the NRA as a domestic terror group in their own town or location. These results indicate that a full third of Democrats would label the 5 million plus NRA legal gun owners as domestic terrorists in waiting. Only a small minority of unaffiliated and Republican voters agreed with the Democrats.
28% of Democrats Say It Should Be Illegal to Join the NRA
One of the most shocking results of the poll was the number of respondents who felt it should be illegal to join the National Rifle Association at all. According to the poll, it should be against the law to support pro-gun groups.
Since groups like the NRA exist to support and defend a key element of the Constitution and one of our fundamental freedoms, it is shocking to see how many respondents agreed to take those freedoms away. The NRA does far more than just support responsible gun ownership; they focus on education and safety, too. Removing access and restricting membership would make it more difficult for citizens to exercise their Second Amendment rights and to learn how to responsibly handle a firearm.
