Voters don’t actually care about the gun issue

“I don’t see any evidence that important Senate races are going to be decided on guns this year, even after Orlando,” said Wes Anderson, the National Rifle Association’s longtime pollster.

Gun control advocates are also preparing for a low profile in November. Everytown for Gun Safety, the gun control group started by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has so far targeted only one candidate, New Hampshire Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte, a leader of the group told American Media Institute.

Although the NRA and leading gun control advocates, including Americans for Responsible Solutions PAC, are expected to spend millions supporting or opposing candidates at all levels in the 2016 elections, this spending will focus mainly on state ballot initiatives.

Gun referenda will be on the ballot in California, Maine, Nevada and Washington, where gun control groups have far outspent their opponents. Everytown for Gun Safety has already spent nearly $4 million in Nevada and more than $2.5 million in Maine, according to campaign finance reports.

The belief that guns will have little impact on the fall elections may seem surprising given the recent spate of high-profile shootings. The murder of police officers in Baton Rouge and Dallas came on the heels of the deadly shootings of African-American men by local police in Minnesota and Louisiana. Those deaths, the Orlando terrorist massacre in June, and the spike in murders in Chicago and Baltimore, have put guns at the center of political debate.

Democrats have seized on guns as a potential election issue. Recent efforts have included a sit-in by House Democrats demanding a vote on gun control legislation, a July 7 march on the White House for gun control led by the Congressional Black Caucus, and repeated calls for stricter gun controls from President Obama and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Seventy-two percent of registered voters say that gun policy is “very important” to their vote in 2016, according a recent study from the Pew Research Center. But that seemingly unambiguous finding masks the subtlety and complexity of the issue. Indeed, people with sharp disagreements can agree that gun policy is very important while remaining poles apart in their views about the right of self-defense.

Blanket questions, for example, often suggest consensus. Polls show an overwhelming number of Americans support background checks for gun purchasers, and oppose the sale of guns to people on the terrorist watch list. But when voters are asked about the efficacy or desirability of specific proposals, that broad agreement disappears.

A McClatchy-Marist poll conducted July 5-9, for instance, found that 45 percent of Americans think the nation would be safer with more guns and 46 percent think we would be safer with fewer guns. That even split hides the stark division between Republicans (79 percent of whom link guns with safety) and Democrats (77 percent of whom link guns with danger). That poll reported a similar divide when it reported that 51 percent of Americans favor an outright ban on the sale of assault or semi-automatic rifles, while 46 percent oppose one.

The most telling poll result concerning the 2016 election may be the one that has found no movement despite the recent shootings. In late June, a Quinnipac University poll found that 54 percent of Americans supported stricter gun control while 42 percent opposed it. That is almost the same split Quinnipac found when asked the same broad question in 2013 (54/41) and 2008 (54/40).

The fact that polling on gun control has remained fairly consistent despite weeks of high-profile pushing for more of it no doubt has contributed to the NRA’s confidence.

“Historically, Second Amendment supporters are single-issue voters and there is no equivalent on the other side,” NRA spokeswoman Catherine Mortensen said. “Hillary Clinton is hostile to law-abiding gun owners and has said that she does not believe in the individual right to keep a firearm in our homes for self-protection. The intensity among Second Amendment voters to defeat Hillary Clinton is unparalleled and they will turn out to vote in November.”

Mortensen repeatedly declined to address how much the NRA might spend in the 2016 cycle or to discuss any particular races the group thinks will shape up as competitive battles.

Certainly it has been many cycles since guns loomed so large on the political scene. The last time guns played a decisive role in national elections was the midterm elections of 1994. After Democrats passed an assault weapon ban that year, they were routed at the polls, losing control of the House for the first time in four decades. Other factors, including President Bill Clinton’s failed attempt to overhaul the healthcare system and the Republicans’ “Contract With America,” shaped the outcome, but the losses led many Democrats to see broad federal gun control as a third rail of politics. This experience became especially bitter for them as it also became clear that the ban for which they had paid so heavy a price proved negligible in curbing gun violence.

Since the massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, 11 states have passed stricter gun laws while at least two dozen have loosened restrictions.

Where guns may have a bigger electoral impact is at the local level. Roughly 80 percent of the seats in state legislatures are in play in 2016, but even there it’s unlikely gun policy or any other broad issue will make the difference because, historically, state races haven’t been especially competitive. That trend has only intensified since redistricting occurred after the 2010 census. This year, 43.4 percent of state candidates face no major party opposition, according to Ballotpedia.

For all the NRA’s fabled influence and money, groups pushing gun control initiatives have spent much more than the NRA on these sorts of initiatives, records show. In Washington state last year, for example, outfits supporting gun control spent $11.2 million compared to only $600,000 in opposition.

Jonathan E. Lowy, a lawyer with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, argued that there appears to be an acknowledgement by both parties of strong public support for policies such as background checks that focus on gun access rather than on more contentious efforts to ban certain types of weapons.

“Hillary Clinton has embraced a gun-violence prevention agenda more strongly and openly than any national candidate I can remember,” said Lowy, who has worked for the Brady Center for 19 years. “Even Donald Trump and many other gun lobby supporters recognize that the extremist gun lobby position is politically unpalatable, so instead of championing the gun lobby’s agenda, they are trying to make it sound like they are more supportive of laws to make it harder for certain people to possess guns. We’re not seeing their God, gays and guns ritual this year.”

The greater expenditures of time, money and energy go to lobbying, outreach and education. Still, while Everytown’s webpage urges visitors to fight “politicians who do the NRA’s bidding,” the NRA is hardly the biggest player on the political stage. Of the top 100 contributors, the NRA ranks 75th, according to Open Secrets. The NRA spends about 10 percent of its $300 million annual budget on elections.

“The NRA has a very healthy budget and any average voter would say this is a well-heeled organization,” Anderson said. “But in Nevada and in other places, they will get outspent 3 to 1 or 4 to 1. It’s from a broad perspective they have a lot of reach and that’s how they get their leverage.”

Just as the NRA has long rated officeholders based on their support for the organization’s positions, these new anti-gun groups are doing the same. Taking another page from the NRA’s playbook, they are organizing letter-writing campaigns and protests to reinforce their message.

“When you show that in large numbers,” said Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Guns, “lawmakers start to worry. If they fear they are going to lose their jobs, they start to vote differently.”

Her group is planning to oppose specific candidates in 2016, although again the only one she would name was Ayotte. Focusing on one election cycle, however, misses the point.

“This is a marathon, not a sprint,” she said.