A question about firearms research

What other personal possession could be harder to survey than a firearm?

I would be interested to know how many people of a given age group vs another given age group would be unable to own a firearm?

Are the surveyor's qualifying the poll by 1st asking if one could own a firearm?

Just a question about a firearm being in the home could be asking a person to incriminate said person. Is that factor in your
Whether you "believe" in it or not, the GSS is a respected and important data collection instrument.
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I personally like the survey that Japan based it decision on back in <1941.
To keep an element of "Don't Know" is not a bad thing, IMHO ;)
 
Ike, it appears the GSS data on firerms ownership may be questionable! If not just for the many reasons indicated here, but for many others I'm sure.

Maybe GSS should ask the simple question:

- Are you willing to talk about firearms ownership?

Those results may be very interesting.

I would hypothesise that people who don't own guns would be more willing to talk about gun ownership than those who actually own guns. But then again, how do we prove that hypothesis without knowing who owns guns in the first place? See the catch 22?
 
In point of fact, the decision by many gun owners not to disclose that ownership has played right into the hands of the antis - witness the VPC's use of the GSS data to claim a lack of interest in private gun ownership. This attribution is made with the full knowledge of the NSSF data and the NICS data. See Josh Horowitz's explanation (explaining away) the significance of the transaction data. Our best estimate is that his points account for less than 15% of the NICS transactions (we're still analyzing it)..
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Very interesting article by Josh H., and I can understand what you mean by saying our decision not to disclose information could be used by the anti-gun people.

Maybe if the GSS had a better educational system in place to inform people, like myself, about what they do AND why, it would help. I do participate in NRA surveys, because I know the organization and I know where they stand on most issues.

From the Josh H. Article:
In reality, gun ownership among American women has remained flat over the past three decades, with 10.5% of women reporting owning firearms in 1980 compared to 9.9% in 2010.
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This statement is based on what? Talking to the local gun dealers and pawn brokers, they have remarked that more women have come to them looking to buy handguns than "ever Before." I was talking to a man who teaches concealed carry, he has special classes just for women and they are usually full.

Could it be the surveys have just not targeted the right audiences, or a broad enough audience? If you asked 1,000 people in New York City a question and then ask 1,000 people in Montana the same question, you will likely end up with two different results. How do you reconcile that?

I find this all very interesting. For some reason I am unable to open the GSS link that Glen provided.
 
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I thought you all might find these interesting from our research on the NICS data. The first graph is a time series of the aggregated national data. The solid line is the extracted trend and the dotted line shows the actual transaction data with a very pronounced seasonal trend.

The seasonal trend starts climbing form July on each year, peaking in December. Then is drops off in January and has another, smaller peak in April.

To us, it is the extracted trend (the "noise" from the seasonal cycles is removed) that is exciting. There is a bump right after 9/11/2001 - but it flattens back out in less than a year. Then, starting in October, 2004, there is a growing trend (the AWB was sunsetted as of 30 SEP 2004). The next big change occurs in the summer of 2008.

nics_ts2.jpg


In this second chart we're using something called a growth model analysis to see if (a) the rate of growth changed in 2008 (increase in the slope of the line or rate of change) and (b) if there was single big jump or change in the general elevation of the growth line. What we found is that there was both a change in the rate of transactions (post-election slope is much steeper) and an increase in the general volume of sales. Notice that the rate of increase changes dramatically from the blue line (pre-election) to the green line (post election). There is also a noticeable jump up in the elevation of the line post-election (green line is much higher than the blue line). For those who care about such things both of these changes were statistically significant at p<.001 (there is a 99.9% likelihood that these results were not due to random variation).

nics_election.jpg
 
How many conservatives are in academia?
How many have EVER voted for a non-democrat candidate?
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More than you'd think, but let's be very careful about going there. We don't want this to degenerate into a conservative/liberal debate.

Thus, the questions cannot escape bias which is typically not favorable for guns.
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The question remains: can we change that climate, and how would we go about it?
 
In the GSS, I see a distinct difference between the questions about ownership and the questions about firearms policy. To me, the ownership questions are "value neutral" and the policy questions are more prone to prejudicial wording.

I have more confidence in the validity of the responses to the ownership questions.

Using Glenn's link, I went to the GSS site and played around with the ownership data. I correlated the refusal rate with the rate of acknowledged ownership. Not surprisingly there was a moderately strong negative correlation indicating that as ownership has gone down, the refusal rate has been increasing (r=-0.51, R^2=0.26). The shared variance (26%) might be enough to account for the decline in acknowledged ownership. If this is so, then actual ownership may be flat.

I am afraid that as long a gun owners are collectively hostile to the idea of acquisition of knowledge about ownership not much will change. While it is professionally frustrating, I respect everyone's right to refuse to cooperate with surveys.
 
The question remains: can we change that climate, and how would we go about it?
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I think that's exactly the point of Ike's posting this. If gun owners are intentionally under representing themselves, they're effectively ensuring that they're viewed as a fringe minority and setting things up to get worse, not better.

Not to mention that a lot of the replies in this thread feed straight into the stereotypes of gun owners as paranoid, ultra-conservative, the big gub'mint is out to get me types. I'm sure many people will say they feel that way for good reason, from prior experience etc, nevertheless, that's the stereotype you're working against and it isn't a positive one.

In more than a few ways, gun owners are their own worst enemies IMO.
 
I think that's exactly the point of Ike's posting this. If gun owners are intentionally under representing themselves, they're effectively ensuring that they're viewed as a fringe minority and setting things up to get worse, not better.
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Weird fringe I am in. Just about everyone I know owns a gun and has a family income well over 100K per year. I am not so worried about gun owners under representing themselves. Once you go inside a voting booth you don't have to say how many guns you own.

Oh yeah, and most of them work for the government. The big government that is out to get them.
 
I am not so worried about gun owners under representing themselves. Once you go inside a voting booth you don't have to say how many guns you own.
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As Tom Servo's already pointed out, you're seriously mistaken if you think that all gun owners agree on everything (or even most things) and vote as one group.
 
Why would I believe that? Lots of antis are gun owners. They just believe that only they are responsible enough to own guns. This has always been the case for gun control.
 
In more than a few ways, gun owners are their own worst enemies IMO.
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I think Tamara put it best (paraphrased): It seems we're not happy unless we're an oppressed minority.

We're not a minority, and we're not all that oppressed in most cases. The playing field has largely leveled, and we've really been doing okay for ourselves these last few years. We are now in a position to approach many of the debates we once found hopeless from a position of assurance and authority.

I recently did some work with a group of musicians at a local college. Musicians. They knew me as the "gun guy," and know what? We had a decent conversation about it. Only one person (out of 8 present) had reservations about gun ownership, and he gracefully admitted that we'd just have to agree to disagree.

When I was in college in the early 1990's, I'd never have brought up the subject of guns at all, lest I be labelled an extremist weirdo. Things are changing. The trick is to keep nudging the boundaries, and the academic world might be a good place to start.
 
More than you'd think
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Very doubtful.

I have a lot of exposure to academia, and even many of the hard science folks are very liberal, as every survey of academics has shown for a long time.
 
The GSS survey is a voluntary one. If you don't want to take it or answer a question you don't have to. Same as any other poll or survey like a voter poll or survey on a consumer product. If I did not want to answer a set of questions I would not take the poll or I would refuse to answer those questions. This basic standard limits the accuracy of any poll.

The GSS is a well known and respected outfit.

I figure it's impossible to lump all gun owners together politically. I also figure that is a good thing. Consider what would have to happen to make all gun owners fall into one political camp and you'll get the point (set aside the fact that those in power and those who do the enforcing for them would always be armed).

tipoc
 
We did a class survey of faculty from four colleges a few years back for project and found the percentage of CHLs was close to that the general population.

Also, I take enough crap about being a gun person in academia, you if you make general comments about ALL academia, you will be a sorry poster. And you don't have to be a conservative to appreciate firearms.

I get asked questions and have taken out folks to shoot who are not hard core conservatives. Feminists, gays, liberals, etc.

So let's drop the mantra that you have to be a conservative to appreciate the 2nd Amendment.
 
Also, I take enough crap about being a gun person in academia, you if you make general comments about ALL academia, you will be a sorry poster. And you don't have to be a conservative to appreciate firearms.

I get asked questions and have taken out folks to shoot who are not hard core conservatives. Feminists, gays, liberals, etc.

So let's drop the mantra that you have to be a conservative to appreciate the 2nd Amendment.
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The double irony of your post is much more effective than the post of mine you deleted.

Why people think you need to be of certain political stripe to own a gun is a mystery to me. Barbara Boxer owns a gun for self defense. But gun ownership is not ok for the rest of us for weird reasons that I can not understand.

I don't really do politics but people tell me that conservatives are more about individual freedom and responsibility than liberals. I have not seen that in practice much. However mostly they seem opposed to excessive gun laws with a few notable exceptions (like NJ).
 
I don't want to veer into politics but each side chooses what it thinks are the real issues of personal freedom and happily wants to constrain the other.

I don't need a political party that wants to put a hand over my crotch or one over my holster and gun. I don't want them to control my sugar intake or certain recreational chemical substances.

Unfortunately, the 'champions' of personal liberty on each side want to do one of these.

Forgive for this post. Your personal freedom may be another's societal atrocity.
 
And you don't have to be a conservative to appreciate firearms
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Thank you, Glenn. I'm always somewhat baffled by the idea that one has to be a conservative to be a firearms enthusiast.

I certainly don't fit that mold at all. I'm a former pharmacist who is now a chemistry teacher, and I have many years of education under the belt. I am a union member and a labor activist. My politics definitely lean to the left, bordering on the socialist point of view.

And I like guns... a lot.
 
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