BELLEVUE, WA – Only days after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to one of the nation’s most egregious gun laws, a new Rasmussen poll shows waning support for stricter gun laws.

The Citizen’s Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms said today that the poll results indicate strongly that “America’s philosophical pendulum is definitely swinging back in favor of gun rights and individual liberty.”

“Whether Congressional anti–gunners like it or not,” observed CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, “the American public has wised up to the fact that prohibitive gun control measures, like the gun ban in Chicago that is now being challenged in the Supreme Court, have not stopped violent crime and only disarm the victims. Americans are concerned about their personal safety and the safety of their families, and they have had it with Utopian gun bans that leave them defenseless against merciless thugs.”

Gottlieb, who co–authored the newly–released Assault on Weapons: The Campaign to Eliminate Your Guns with Gun Week Senior Editor Dave Workman, said the Rasmussen poll results are telling. According to Rasmussen, only 39 percent of Americans believe the country needs stricter gun laws. That’s down from 43 percent only six months ago. Democrats still emerge as the party of gun control, with 65 percent of respondents claiming Democrat affiliation supporting tighter gun laws while 69 percent of identified Republicans and 62 percent of independents do not support more gun laws.

“It’s ironic that the Chicago case just went to the Supreme Court,” Gottlieb noted, “while Rasmussen tells us that only 20 percent of adults believe city governments have a right to prevent citizens from owning handguns.”

Sixty–nine percent say city governments do not have that authority, and 11 percent were undecided, the poll disclosed.

“This suggests that those who support a handgun ban in Chicago are way out of the mainstream,” Gottlieb said. “Gun control is a losing proposition, for the public that wants to fight back against criminals, and especially for anti–gun politicians who cling to that failed philosophy as the nation leaves them behind.”