In our bitterly divided political climate, it’s rare for any high-profiled Supreme Court decision to get the support of a broad cross-section of society, but a new survey from Marquette Law has found the exception to the rule: the Bruen decision that struck down the “may issue” carry laws in New York and a handful of other states.
The decision has seen majority support in every Marquette Law poll taken since the 6-3 opinion was handed down in June, 2022, but the most recent survey from the law school shows the decision is getting more popular over time.
More than two-thirds of adults back the Bruen decision; a fact that’s no doubt heartbreaking to the gun control groups who predicted mass mayhem and unchecked violence after the Court ruled that states can’t require gun owners to demonstrate “good cause” or a “justifiable need” to carry a firearm in self-defense.
According to the cross-tabs of the poll, even 50% of self-identified Democrats concur with the Court’s decision, along with 69% of independents and a whopping 90% of self-identified Republicans. In fact, it’s hard to find a demographic with a majority opposed to Bruen. To give you an idea of just how broadly popular the decision is, here’s the level of either strong or moderate support Marquette Law found among different slices of the electorate:
- 73% of men
- 65% of women
- 61% of 18-to-29-year-olds
- 65% of those 60 and older
- 74% of those with a high school diploma
- 57% of those with a post-graduate degree
- 72% of non-Hispanic whites
- 65% of non-Hispanic Blacks
- 64% of Hispanics
The only demographics with majority opposition to Bruen (that I found, anyway) are “very liberal” adults (42% support) and “strong Democrats” (47%).
Not only does this demonstrate that the gun control lobby is out of step with the American public when it comes to the right to carry, it suggests another potential line of attack against the Harris/Walz campaign going forward. Harris has previously declared that the Bruen decision “defies common sense and the Constitution of the United States”; an odd take given that the text of the Second Amendment clearly protects the right to both possess and carry firearms.
Walz, meanwhile, has his own history with making some decidedly weird comments about the right to carry. In his now-infamous remarks from 2018 where he falsely claimed to have carried a semi-automatic rifle “in war”, Walz also expressed his opposition to right-to-carry reciprocity.
I’ll take my kick in the butt from the NRA on this. I spent 25 years in the Army and I hunt. And I gave the [NRA’s] money back, and I’ll tell you what I have been doing. I have been voting for common sense legislation that protects the Second Amendment. But we can do background checks. We can do CDC research. We can make sure we don’t have reciprocal carry among states, and we can make sure that those weapons of war that I carried in war is the only place where those weapons are at.
That line may have drawn applause from progressives in Minnesota, but it shows just how out of step Walz is with the rest of us when it comes to our ability to protect ourselves, our families, and sometimes even strangers from harm.
The Trump campaign should be highlighting Harris and Walz’s opposition to the right to carry, especially given the growing support for the Bruen decision documented by Marquette Law’s ongoing surveys. The Democrats are desperately trying to claim the ticket is offering moderate, mainstream points of view, but when it comes to our Second Amendment rights, it doesn’t get much more extreme than Harris and her pheasant-hunting running mate.
