[Lnc-votes] [Lnc-business] Gun issue reveals positive trend in support of young Americans for individual rights

[lnc-...@hq.lp.org]

The increasingly libertarian attitudes of young people in the United States have been noticed by the media, but mostly in regards to the issues of GLBTQ rights and legalizing drugs (particularly marijuana). There has been some countervailing commentary to the effect that this is not really a libertarian trend, but a left-leaning one.

Polling data on the gun issue though, appears to indicate that young adults care about personal autonomy issues even when those values aren't shared by most on the left:

> A July Pew poll found that protecting gun rights is more important than controlling gun ownership for 49 percent of adults age 18 to 29. For Gen Xers up to age 49, gun rights are a priority for 44 percent, baby boomers are at 49 percent and 48 percent of seniors over 65 share that view.
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> But adults under 30 haven’t always been so evenly split. In Pew polls conducted from 1993 to 2007, young adults were the least likely of any age group to prioritize gun rights; their support ranged from 21 percent (2000) to 37 percent (2007). The preference for gun rights didn’t crack 40 percent until 2008. It’s risen fairly steadily since, aside from a dip in 2012, and the current crop of young adults support gun rights at historically high rates for people their age.
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> Young adults’ social and cultural tolerance may come from an emphasis on individual autonomy that makes their views on guns less predictable, pollsters say.
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> “On gun rights, it’s tricky,” said Ekins. Compared with other generations, “millennials are the most likely to say that individuals should make their own choices.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/01/obama-millennials-guns-217458#ixzz4F5c5wmtR

The dark spot remains young people's attitudes on economics, which still tend to be more statist. I believe that Libertarians using more compassionate and populist messaging can help turn this around, for instance by talking about protecting the property rights of and minimizing government theft against poor, minority, and homeless people as a social justice issue, and how these economic issues tie in to issues like police abuse. Here's a good quote from one libertarian piece that makes this connection:

> Revenue, after all, is the underlying, unacknowledged purpose of most petty law enforcement, including Broken Windows. And police brutality, to a large extent, is a matter of power tripping cops reacting brutally when the serfs stiffen their backs against street-side, impromptu tax collection. For more on this, see my recent essay, “Why the Poor #CantBreathe.” Revenue collection, after all, is the only thing Broken Windows policing accomplishes, aside from indulging the vindictiveness its well-to-do supporters harbor toward “riff raff.”

Read more: http://www.dansanchez.me/feed/the-fat-blue-line-and-the-other-broken-window-fallacy

Love & Liberty,
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At-Large Representative, Libertarian National Committee
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