I read this from Dennis Henigan (of the Organization Formerly Known As Handgun Control) and got a chuckle out of it:
Generally speaking, Congressional offices hear more frequently from “gun rights” partisans than from constituents who support stronger gun laws. This, of course, says nothing about public support for gun control. For example, over 80% of Americans support legislation to close the “gun show loophole” by extending Brady background checks to private sales at gun shows. But it is a level of support not generally reflected in constituent communications to Members of Congress.
In other words, the American public overwhelmingly support more gun control but they're not motivated enough to call their Congresscritters to demand it, getting themselves drowned out and their wishes denied by the noisy minority of the eeeevil gun lobby. Does that make any sense whatsoever? Yeah, to me either. I'd think that if the support for making all transfers undergo background checks was that high, Congress would be hearing from the people. I'd guess those polls were rigged to support HCI's goals. That's honestly the only thing that I could think of that would explain such a poll.
As for the bad reviews of Henigan's book, well, a perusal of said reviews shows quite a few of them to be well-written, and with actual cites to back up what they say. The way he (and some on our side, regrettably) talks one would think the reviews were full of "OMG Henigan is teh suxxorz!!!!1111one!!!"-type writing from people who hadn't read the book, but a surprising number of them are actually very well written, i.e., "Henigan is wrong and here is why." Of course that doesn't surprise me. We are the ones on whose side the facts and logic lie.
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