Interesting new Gallup Survey: No one views Global Warming as most important problem and only 2% view gun control that way

A copy of the Gallup survey is available here.

Also of interest is the percent of Americans who are satisfied with the direction of the country. The percent of Americans satisfied with how things are going in July of election years isn't a great predictor of how people will feel that November, but 35 percent who were satisfied this July was 7 percentage points higher than the previous high in July 2012.

July 2010: 21 percent satisfied

November 2010: 19 percent satisfied

July 2012: 28 percent satisfied

November 2012: 31 percent satisfied

July 2014: 24 percent satisfied

November 2014: 20 percent satisfied

July 2016: 17 percent satisfied

November 2016: 37 percent satisfied

July 2018: 35 percent satisfied

At Townhall.com: “How Entertainment Shows have become Vehicles for Gun Control Propaganda”

My newest piece is up at Townhall.com on the continuing bias in entertainment television. The piece starts this way:

All of the major television networks use their primetime entertainment shows to push a pro-gun control agenda.  Liberal television executives apparently think that they have the power to change Americans’ attitudes.

Not liking guns has been portrayed as cool for a long time. It is an old theme that dates back to the original 1980s MacGyver series, in which the titular character avoids using guns and expresses his aversion to them. This theme has continued with the current remake.

But the push to sway public opinion really seems to have picked up. This spring on ABC’s “The Crossing,” the sheriff’s young son says, “I don’t like guns” when a deputy suggests he may someday replace his father. The deputy appears discomforted by the exchange.

In NBC’s “Reverie,” main character Mara Kint(Sarah Shahi) is traumatized by the shooting deaths of her sister and niece. The deaths are played repeatedly throughout the show. In the second episode, which aired last month, Kint throws a gun into the ocean and explains that she has had training with guns. When asked why she threw the gun away she says that she “hates guns.” This scene touches on multiple gun control points in just 15 seconds.

It’s a tight race, but NBC might just be the worst network.  It seems to have given out orders for its TV shows to include some anti-gun or pro-gun control mentions.

This April, an episode of “Taken” (Season 2, Episode 11) tried to convey to viewers that gun-free zones work because the criminals obey the bans.

Santana(Jessica Camacho) asks Agent Bryan Mills (Clive Standen), if he is “OK with this whole no-guns thing” as they enter a hospital  Mills replies that it is OK because the gun-free zone means that “bad guys won’t have them either.”

Do viewers really believe that a group of professional killers couldn’t find some way to get guns into a hospital?  Mass public shootings actually almost always occur in gun-free zones. Since 1950, that’s been true of 98 percent of incidents.  This happens precisely because criminals prefer unarmed victims.

In March, the NBC show “Chicago Fire” (Season 6, episode 15) contains ascenewhere stored ammunition catches fire. Bullets fly everywhere, causing firemen to think that a sniper is targeting them. One of them is seriously wounded.

It is hard to believe that anyone would want to have a gun in their home after watching this scene.  But it is complete fiction.  A gun barrel is needed to propel a bullet forward.  Outside of a gun, the gunpowder in a bullet would simply explode in all directions, which wouldn’t generate much speed in any particular direction.

A February episode of NBC’s “The Black List” (Season 5, episode 13) begins with a group of people accusing a gun maker of providing inexpensive guns that “have no value to anyone but criminals.” The gun maker is accused of making sales that “drive up homicide rates,” further increase the demand for his product, and bring in “blood money.”  There is even a dig about how the law protects the gun maker from being sued, to which his only response is that everything he’s doing is perfectly legal. No one mentions that poor people — particularly poor minorities — are the most likely victims of violent crime and rely on inexpensive gunsfor self-defense. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

At The Hill: Gun control advocates are hyperventilating over Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination

My latest piece at The Hill is available here:

Gun control advocates are hyperventilating over President Trump’s nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun rights group, Everytown for Gun Safety, warned: “Judge Kavanaugh has applied an extreme and dangerous interpretation of the Second Amendment when determining whether a law is constitutional, one that does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety.”

Since the Supreme Court’s last gun control case in 2010, the court has turned away at least 15 gun-rights cases, including several challenges to prohibitions on semi-automatic assault rifles and on public carry of firearms. Gun control advocates hoped that the Supreme Court would overturn unfavorable lower court decisions. Some believe that Justice Anthony Kennedy stopped the court from taking these cases, but it could just as easily have been Chief Justice John Roberts, who places considerable weight on building consensus and is willing to put off dealing with contentious issues. Rarely is any information released on who voted to hear these appeals.

Gun control advocates are most upset by a 2011 dissent in which Kavanaugh voted to strike down Washington, D.C.’s ban on most semi-automatic rifles. Two other judges voted to uphold the ban, so Kavanaugh lost the vote.

But it’s easy to read too much into any one case, especially when a judge is simply following precedent set by the Supreme Court — in this case, precedent from the 2008 Heller decision that struck down D.C.’s handgun ban. “As a lower court, however, it is not our role to re-litigate Heller or to bend it in any particular direction,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Our sole job is to faithfully apply Heller and the approach it set forth for analyzing gun bans and regulations.”

Lower court judges are supposed to follow Supreme Court precedent, whether or not they personally agree with the decision. When a judge ignores precedent, it is easy to infer that he is acting on his own political biases. But Kavanaugh has been a consistent follower of precedent while he has been on the D.C. Circuit Court, widely acknowledged to be the nation’s second highest court, just below the Supreme Court.

While the Supreme Court can overrule its own precedent, Kavanaugh has co-authored a hefty 942 page book on the topic titled “Law of Judicial Precedent.” The book seeks to describe rules governing when courts should follow precedent, and it makes clear that jettisoning precedent is not something that he takes lightly.

It’s not as though Kavanaugh took a particularly strong self-defense rights view of Supreme Court precedent: “Heller largely preserved the status quo of gun regulation in the United States. Heller established that traditional and common gun laws in the United States remain constitutionally permissible.”

Kavanaugh showed consistent respect for precedent, but the left insists that he is dangerous because he supposedly won’t follow precedent when it comes to Roe v. Wade. But during his confirmation hearing to the D.C. Circuit Court in 2006, Kavanaugh promised, “I would follow Roe v Wade faithfully and fully.” In language very similar to what he said to justify his decision on D.C.’s rifle ban, Kavanaugh explained that Roe v Wade would be, “Binding precedent of the court. It’s been decided by the Supreme Court.”

Bloomberg’s Everytown is also simply wrong when it says that Kavanaugh “does not take into account a law’s impact on public safety.” For example, on page 33 of his dissent, Kavanaugh compares the safety issues for semi-automatic handguns and semi-automatic rifles. On pages 42 and 43 he compares the relatively safety aspects of licensing versus registration laws. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.