4 in 10 American Say They Have Grown More Conservative

Says a new Gallup poll.  There’s a bit on gun control:

Gallup polling shows Americans becoming more conservative on gun control between 2004 and 2008, with opposition to banning handguns growing from 63% to 69%. And disagreement with making gun laws “more strict” grew, from 45% to 49%.

A lot of these trends could be demographic.  A lot of younger people get more conservative as they get jobs and have to start paying taxes and raising families.

8 thoughts on “4 in 10 American Say They Have Grown More Conservative”

  1. — A lot of younger people get more conservative as they get jobs and have to start paying taxes and raising families.

    Not that I disagree with your assertion, but if that was the root of more Americans becoming conservative, wouldn’t the trend be limited to fiscal and family issues? I realize protecting your family would fall within that, but is that the reason more people are becoming conservative on guns? Just seems like a bit of a stretch without more.

    Also, it irks me that becoming conservative on guns means being in favor of liberal gun laws that provide fewer restrictions, that should rightfully be called being liberal on gun laws as in supporting liberty. Sadly think its a battle lost to the tides of of contemporary discourse…

  2. Nothing jolts the young leftist quite so much as seeing their first paycheck with the amount they earned right next to the amount they actually get paid. It’s easy to call for higher taxes when you have no income; less so when you see even a small amount taken away for the government and for the Ponzi scheme known as Social Security, especially after you learned in college that Social Security will not have any money to give back to you when you retire because your parents’ generation took it all.

    As to guns, I think that is, in fact a sign of liberalization, or libertarianization, rather than conservitizing, as Monty noted. I think young people are generally more tolerant of all things, from gay rights to gun rights. That is obviously a massive generalization, but in my experience, young liberals are more likely to either not care about or support gun rights rather than actively oppose the 2nd Amendment. Contrast their views and lack of activism on this issue to their parents, who, if they are also lefties, largely hate guns.

  3. Nothing jolts the young leftist quite so much as seeing their first paycheck with the amount they earned right next to the amount they actually get paid.

    Yup. I remember a young college graduate we hired at Harris Digital Telephone Systems. The first week he was there, it was all, “The government needs to take care of those in need!” By the sixth paycheck, he was saying, “Where is all this money going?”

    It’s true that most of it isn’t going to people in need; it’s going to people who are already rich, and getting rich feeding at the trough–but it is was still amusing to watch how being a single guy with a good job raised his consciousness.

  4. I think young people are generally more tolerant of all things, from gay rights to gun rights

    I think in general that’s true, but I also just don’t think young people have too much passion for the issue one way or the other.

  5. I think the reason you see support for gun control among older leftists is that they remember what happened to Jack and Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and only ever heard of one side using guns in the civil rights movement, and it wasn’t their side.

  6. Monty,
    Not that I disagree with your assertion, but if that was the root of more Americans becoming conservative, wouldn’t the trend be limited to fiscal and family issues?


    People who have children start thinking about the kind of world they must raise their children in, and what kind of world their children/grandchildren will live in after they leave home.

    In that broad sense most issues are family issues.

  7. As most people get older they lose their faith in institutions in general and government in particular. People become more pro-gun as they take responsibility for their own protection – and they realize in that they might have to use their guns to through off an oppressive government.

  8. Thus the huge effort to get everybody into Colleges and Universities for longer periods. Whether it does them any job-good or not – it’s academic shock-and-awe that keeps up the exposure to Identity Politics and Groupthink, the philosophies that are nurtured in the academic Institutions.

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