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On guns and climate, the elites are out of touch
...Over the last decade, the Gallup organization has been asking Americans whether the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated or generally correct. From 1998 to 2007, except for the runup to the 2004 election, they said it was generally serious by roughly a 2-1 margin — 66 to 30 percent in 2006, for example. But in March 2009, that margin slipped to only 57 to 41 percent, with two-thirds of Republicans and nearly half of independents saying concern is exaggerated.

Similarly, last month pollster Scott Rasmussen found that only 34 percent believe that global warming is caused by human activity, while 48 percent said it was caused by long-term planetary trends. That’s almost exactly the opposite of what he found 12 months before — 47 to 34 percent the other way around. However, 48 percent of the group Rasmussen calls the Political Class — in other words, the elite — continues to believe global warming is man-made.

On guns, Gallup has been testing opinion for many years on one extreme proposal that is the goal, usually unstated, of many gun control advocates: banning the possession of handguns. Support was 60 percent in 1960 and 49 percent in 1965. It was as high as 43 percent in the early 1990s, before the Clinton Congress passed the so-called assault weapon ban. In March 2007 it had fallen to 29 percent — a minority, almost a fringe position. In the early 1990s Gallup found that Americans by a 2-1 margin favored stricter gun sale laws over less strict ones or keeping them the same. By fall 2008 they were evenly split.

Some of these shifts in opinion may be responses to events that liberal elites have not deigned to notice. Forty of the 50 states now have concealed weapons laws that allow law-abiding citizens to get permits to carry guns. Gun controllers predicted these would result in traffic shootouts and general mayhem. They haven’t. It turns out that criminals are deterred from attacks less by gun control laws than by the possibility that their intended victims may be armed. As for global warming, many Americans may have noticed that temperatures actually haven’t been rising over the last decade as global warming alarmists predicted. The elites are able to hire armed security guards and jet off on private jets, so they are less likely to notice these things.

I think there’s something else at work here. For liberal elites, belief in gun control and global warming has taken on the character of religious faith. We have sinned (by hoarding guns or driving sport utility vehicles), we must atone (by turning in our guns or recycling), we must repent (by supporting gun control or cap-and-trade schemes). You may notice that the “we” in question is usually the great mass of ordinary American citizens. ...