WaPo push poll: Maryland favors gun control

The headline screamed "Washington Post poll finds support for stricter gun laws in Maryland." And if you glanced at a poll put out last week by the venerable leftist paper, you might be led to believe our state is home to a bunch of idiots. Well, it is, but somehow it seems the Post found several hundred who answered the phone the weekend before last.

It's obvious the poll isn't aimed at the Post readership because they reliably tilt to the left - if you're a conservative in the Beltway area you probably pick up the Washington Times.  Instead, I think it was aimed at a small group of politicians: Democrats in the House of Delegates who may balk at passing this legislation. Yet they really have nothing to fear, given that the poll was taken from a random sampling of adults in Maryland, mainly on a weekend.

I also found the second question to be a loaded one, as three separate items were tucked into one question very similar to the previous one. Even among Second Amendment enthusiasts, most would agree that a background check is a good idea and that question scored 82 percent in the Post poll. Knowing that, it shouldn't be a surprise that when background checks are included in the palette of options for the very next question, the answer would be yes. I doubt that nearly as many Marylanders would agree to fingerprints or an eight-hour training course. And it's not lost on me that the financial cost of O'Malley's plan to individual gun owners was left on the cutting room floor as a question to be asked.

Personally, I would trust the thousands who attempted to testify against making Maryland's already-stringent gun laws even more draconian and safely own and handle guns over people who aren't even gun owners - less than three out of ten who responded to the Post poll were willing to admit they owned a weapon. I daresay they didn't call a whole lot of NRA members then.

Ignore gun owners at your peril, Maryland General Assembly.

I think this is a good time to remind you about yesterday's post on the Annapolis bus trip slated for tomorrow.