This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, May 23rd, 2013.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Polling data shows Americans don't care for Social Security reform until you explain its problems.

And they think Congress should move on from gun control and onto other things.

Even as they also wrongly believe gun crime is higher than it is.

Emily Eekins is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and the polling director at the Reason

Foundation.

We discussed the new Reason Roop Poll out this week.

So we were able to ask Americans what they thought about people owning 3D printers in their own homes.

And overwhelmingly, people think Americans should be allowed to own and print things in their own homes.

But then we followed up and said, some 3D printers can print guns or gun parts.

How do you feel about that?

And a majority of Americans don't like the idea of people printing their own guns.

In general, polling doesn't really reveal what Americans already know, right?

That's true.

Americans have a lot of conflicting opinions about the same issue.

They like the idea that people should be able to own a 3D printer in their own home,

but they don't want someone to create a weapon that's going to hurt them, and since you can't

really background check someone that's printing a gun, it concerns them. But the real issue is if we were

going to try and prevent people from printing 3D guns, well how does that actually

work in practice and are Americans willing to give government the expanded power to enforce these new rules.

And on that line of thinking with respect to Social Security, Americans love it until you start telling them about the problems.

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