Gitmo and Guns

With Gitmo and guns in the news today, a few data points for context never hurt:

GITMO – Like his position on torture, President Obama’s order closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay is not an especially strong suit for him. Part of the public’s question is the same as Congress’, which has moved to hold back money to shutter the facility: Where will the detainees go?

In polls last month anywhere from a low of 42 percent to a high of 51 percent approved of Obama’s move to close Gitmo in the next year. While it depends on how you ask the question, even his best reading is tepid. And leaving Obama out of it, a CBS poll found a close division on whether to keep Gitmo open or to close it, 47-44 percent.

Our own polling has shown the divisions in some more detail. When we asked in January, 53 percent wanted to find some other way to deal with these detainees, a majority but not an overpowering one. Most looking for an alternative favored U.S. trials, but a third wanted the detainees sent to face trial in their home countries. Break it up this way and you actually get a plurality for keeping Gitmo open: Continue to keep terrorism suspects there, 42 percent; try them in U.S. courts, 33 percent; try them in their home countries, 17 percent.

I’ve reported previously  on how Obama – who’s making a major national security speech tomorrow – has lost ground on the torture argument (on which his chief critic, Dick Cheney, speaks tomorrow as well). Put torture and Gitmo together and the full dealing-with-terrorists question looks like a place where the president’s critics may be finding some traction.

GUNS/PARKS – We see no specific data on another of today’s top stories, the move in Congress to allow concealed guns in the national parks. But support for stricter gun control in general is at a low ebb – 51 percent in our April poll, about the same as last fall and down from a peak of 67 percent in 1999 and 2000. It’s one of several social issues on which attitudes have shifted, not in a consistent ideological direction.

We can dig down further into views on guns: Last month just 42 percent thought stricter gun control laws would reduce violent crime, a low since we first asked it 1999. Sixty-one percent said enforcing existing gun control laws would be better than passing new ones. And when we asked in 2007, 55 percent opposed a nationwide ban on carrying concealed weapons.

Some other restrictions typically do win broad support. But all this is informed by two other factors. One is gun ownership itself: Slightly more than four in 10 Americans say they or someone in their home owns a gun. And far more, nearly three-quarters, believe the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to do so.