Rasmussen Reports released an interesting poll result yesterday, confirming the persuasiveness of the NRA’s gun industry advertising campaign and the power of the news media to drive public attitudes.

Rasmussen asked respondents the following question: “Are gun sales in the United States up because of the fear of increased crime or fear of increased government restriction on gun ownership?”

Not surprisingly, the results were:

23% Fear of increased crime

57% Fear of increased government restriction on gun ownership

21% Not sure

A few points are worth mentioning here:

• Tellingly, both answer choices begin with the word “fear.”

• The NRA spent 30 times more money building their fear campaign against Candidate Barack Obama than they did against Al Gore in 2000.  While NRA leaders were crushed on Election Day (taking another Senate loss just this week to Al Franken in Minnesota, after spending over $500,000 in a failed bid to re-elect Norm Coleman), their advertising has been a boon to the gun industry.

• One news story after another attributes the increase in gun sales to President Obama’s election and essentially the “fear of increased government restriction on gun ownership.”

• On the other hand, as a general matter, reducing crime currently ranks low on the public’s priority list.

• Importantly, Rasmussen did not report whether the respondents themselves feared such restrictions, or whether respondents themselves were stocking up on firearms.  Rasmussen did ask the abstract question of why respondents believed gun sales in the United States are up.

• In fact, a Rasmussen survey in April reports that 76% of all Virginians – the NRA’s home state – support a key “restriction on gun ownership”: requiring all sellers at gun shows to do background checks on buyers.

It appears that, in the gun sales survey released yesterday, Rasmussen has done a useful service at measuring public attitudes about the cause of an event that has been covered extensively in the news – the apparent rise in gun sales.

The public apparently believes that people stocking up on guns fear increased government restrictions.

That same public, however, appears to be unafraid of that result.