The next PR war – important.

J

Jim March

New member
Guys, we got trouble.

A recent poll with decent credentials behind it shows that too many people are still fixated on “keeping guns out of the hands of criminals”:

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Poll Claims NRA Members More Moderate than Leaders: Part of the NRA’s strategy of instilling fear is a “never-pass-any-new-gun-laws imperative,” which lawmakers often abide by out of concern that they will be punished at the polls by gun owners. But in his Washington Post column today, E.J. Dionne highlights a new survey of 832 gun owners (including 401 NRA members) by conservative pollster Frank Luntz. The poll finds that NRA members are “more reasonable than the organization’s leaders and supporters in Congress in understanding the urgency of keeping guns out of the wrong hands:

* 86 percent of all gun owners believe the country can “do more to stop criminals from getting guns while also protecting the rights of citizens to freely own them.”
* 78 percent of NRA members support “requiring gun owners to alert police if their guns are lost or stolen.”
* 82 percent of NRA members support “prohibiting people on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns.”
* 69 percent of NRA members support “requiring all gun sellers at gun shows to conduct criminal background checks of the people buying guns.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/12/10/nra-poll/
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Jim again. OK, so what's wrong with that?

We can't control criminal access to guns. It doesn't work. You guys understand that, right? Criminals WILL get guns. They'll import them from overseas if necessary (as is happening in Mexico), they'll steal or bribe them from the gov't (also a major Mexican thing right now), they'll steal them from regular citizens or worst case, they'll make them in garage machine shops.

A gun benefits a criminal financially far more than it does a law abiding citizen. Therefore, with more economic incentive to score them, they'll always try harder and when restrictions are cranked up, the *inevitable* result is to disarm the law-abiding in relation to the criminal class.

Always, without fail.

What we're dealing with here is the prohibitionist mindset. Prohibition doesn't work. We can't keep something as simple as pot out of the country, we're not going to be able to do so with guns either.

Because prohibition doesn't work.

We have to push that theme. And yeah, that means pushing for the legalization of at least most drugs.

One of the stupidest conversations I ever had, with anybody, was at a gun show. I was discussing legalization of drugs with some old dude, and he came up with what he thought was the ultimate answer: “yeah, but I hate those damned drug dealers!” And with a smirk and a nod, he walked away. All I could do was stare, because legalization would be the absolute worst nightmare for the current street dealers.

If you're a prohibitionist, for God's sake stop and re-think. If you think the government should control what adults do with their own bodies, and you vote to make sure the government can do so, you are in favor of criminality in government and an enemy of personal freedom. As a “bonus” you're working to destroy the RKBA.

I'm just had it with the prohibitionists within the RKBA community. Sick to death. It's the dumbest aspect of what we are collectively, that MOST of us are prohibitionists.

Arg!
 
Since I follow the professional literature on this - I shall opine.

It has been known that the actual surveys of opinion have two components if done correctly.

1. As you see above, even the gun owning population is in favor of laws and/or rules that would prevent criminals from obtaining guns. The items stated above are common sense appealing. Whether they reduce criminal gun ownership is an empirical question. Most studies aren't too positive about the rules but the research is flawed and experimental designs and comparisions difficult.

2. The key to avoid getting all paranoid if you are a gun rights person or thinking the gun banning Rapture is here if you are antigun - is found in the first statement.

* 86 percent of all gun owners believe the country can “do more to stop criminals from getting guns while also protecting the rights of citizens to freely own them.”
Click to expand...

The latter part is the operational opinion that prevents total gun bans, prevented the renewal of the AWB, the force behind the shall issue states, Heller, etc.

This cannot be read as support for total gun bans - it does give support for some controls. The 'gun show' loophole issue for example. It might come to banning private sales at organized gun shows or having them go to a NICS table. Banning gun shows would be hard to do but such a rule wouldn't be hard to get the public to support (even the gun owning public). It has the appeal to stop criminals from having guns.

You are also not going to get rid of NICS. The terrorist list - has some surface appeal but can be fought on civil rights grounds of these folks not having been convicted of anything.

I cannot get excited by the results - they have been found before. Nor do I think they mean total bans are coming.

If you want a country free of any gun rules or laws - that isn't going to happen.

So I would advise you all to calm down, think about it and work to prevent draconian bans.
 
Glenn E. Meyer said:
...If you want a country free of any gun rules or laws - that isn't going to happen.

So I would advise you all to calm down, think about it and work to prevent draconian bans.
Click to expand...
Some regulation of guns is and will continue to be a fact of life. We live in a pluralistic, political world, and a lot of people have a lot of different ideas.

There are a bunch of people out there who don't like guns (for whatever reason). There are also a lot of people who are scared of guns or of people who want to have guns. Some think guns should be banned and private citizens shouldn't have them at all. Some may be willing to go a long with private citizens being able to own guns as long as they were regulated. These people vote.

We may think these people are wrong and that they have no valid reason to believe the way they do. We might think that many of them are crazy (and maybe some of them are). Of course some of them think that we have no valid reasons to think the way we do, and some of them think that we're crazy. But they also vote.

Of course we vote too, but there are enough of them to have an impact. They may be more powerful some places than others. But the bottom line is there would always be enough political opposition to repealing all gun control laws so that we will always have some level of gun control.

Of course there's the Second Amendment. But there is also a long line of judicial precedent for the proposition that Constitutionally protected rights may be subject to limited governmental regulation, subject to certain standards. How much regulation will pass muster remains to be seen. But the bottom line, again, is that we are unlikely to see all gun control thrown out by the courts; and we will therefore always have to live with some level of gun control.

How much or how little control we are saddled with will depend. It will depend in part on how well we can win the hearts and minds of the fence sitters. It will depend on how well we can acquire and maintain political and economic power and how adroitly we wield it. It will depend on how skillfully we handle post Heller litigation.

So whether or not we like it, whether or not we think the Second Amendment allows it and notwithstanding what we think the Founding Fathers would have thought about it, we will have to live with some forms of gun control. We may have opportunities to influence how much. But imagining that somehow we can make it all go away isn't going to help.
 
Divide & Conquer

You see it on Gun Forums by gun owner's themselfs & at the shooting ranges.

What do you need that caliber for ?
You should not be able to hunt with that.
Gun owners themselfs ,We (not me ) need more laws on gun safety.
New gun owners need to be tested.
Etc.
Look thru this forum, their are many more that could be listed.
 
Here's the article/poll if anyone is interested....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR2009120903312.html

Guys, we got trouble.

A recent poll with decent credentials behind it shows that too many people are still fixated on “keeping guns out of the hands of criminals”:
Click to expand...

Jim, not to belittle your concerns, believe me, I understand what you are saying. The thing that bothers me about this, as with most polls is the sampling. So they talked with 800 and something gun owners, less than half of them NRA members? I don't even know what the latest guesstimates are concerning number of gun owners in this country... 100 million?, 200 million? So you have 832 gun owners of which 86% think "we need to do more..."
I don't have a calculator handy, that's what, some fraction of less than one percent.

Then we have the opinions of 400 NRA members... last I heard there was approximately 4.5 million of them, again, that's like some fraction of less than one percent, right?


What was the quote in the article.... "Well NRA, meet your members..." I have more than 400 people living on my block here in Chicago and I know the majority of them hate Mayor Daley and wish many evils upon him. I should write an article then with the sensational aspect titled "90% of Chicagoans Think Mayor Daley Should Die With Festering Boils"

Dam, I had to let the dogs out and I lost my train of thought, hate when that happens. I guess what I was saying is, I wouldn't consider this latest piece of
media sensationalism trouble in the sense that it's anything new.
 
A recent poll with decent credentials behind it
Click to expand...

NRA Members For Reasonable Gun Restrictions
» by Paul Helmke on December 11th, 2009 Permalink

Republican pollster Frank Luntz conducted a poll released yesterday by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns which helps confirm surveys of National Rifle Association members conducted as far back as 1989.

The Luntz survey shows – again – that gun owners and even members of the NRA strongly support many specific gun violence prevention laws.
Click to expand...

I am reasonably sure that the Bradys and Mayors Against Illegal Guns do not constitute "decent credentials" behind a poll, but opinions may vary.
 
The only polls that truly matter are held in November

Every couple years.

OF course NRA members support keeping guns out of the hands of criminals. That's just basic common sense. They only people who do not support that are the criminals themselves.

The issue is that we already have, and have had for many, many years, laws that, if obeyed, would keep guns out of the hands of criminals. The problem is that those laws DO NOT WORK! Why would any rational person think another law (or a dozen) will work any differently? Criminals do not obey the laws, that why we call then criminals!

You can make a poll seem to support any position you want. IT all depends on how you phrase the questions, where you set your parameters. That being the case, why would any rational person trust poll results, as indicative of the entire body of political thought? People are not a homogeneous mixture, and a (potentially biased) questioning of a few hundred, to a few thousand cannot and does not give a truly representative sample of the millions of people in the NRA (or in our nation).

Consider that if I decide to run for President in the next presidential election, and I have a poll of 1,000 people, who got asked, "who would you vote for 1) me, 2) Osama Bin Laden 3) Adolf Hitler ?

Now, true, I might get a few people who would say #2 or #3, but lets say the majority choose #1 (me). I could then factually and honestly report that the majority of voters polled would vote for me for President! See how easy that is?

OK, its an exaggeration, but so are so many polls.
 
The theory of sampling argues that if you had a truly representative sample of the population you are interested in - then about 1000 would give you a reasonable error rate.

However, the problem is the what is the population? Is it the adult population, registered voters, or those who vote?

Election sampling is screwy as a special issues brings out voters in a disproportionate number for an election. That's the NRA or any groups (marijuana, abortion, property tax, vote for a stadium, etc.) strategy.

Like I said before, I think legit (non-political based polls) show that most Americans have the dual attitude - guns allowed for law abiding citizens and restrictions to keep them out of the hands of criminals. One side takes only one part of the these two opinions and then crows about it.

The AWB is a good example - surface opinion would be that you don't really need an AR! You must be nuts. So that's why the NSSF, etc. are trying to move the guns into an acceptable sporting use. We might argue that ARs are necessary for the defense against tyranny. The only problem with that is most of the country doesn't see guns useful for that purpose. In fact, the guys with ARs at health care town halls probably reinforce the 'nutsy' view of the gun. I tell it as it is. The use of the guns for disaster (Katrina) defense uses is probably more useful.

Opinion is complex and fixating on some questions is just political BS or a road to get excited.
 
832 people are sampled. Within that sample are grouped 401 NRA members???? Something is extremely fishy with such a sampling rate.

First and foremost, I would like to point out that any random sampling of 1000 people will not produce almost half of the sample being NRA members. Therefore, the sample is not random and can not withstand any modicum of scrutiny.

It is not logical that a truly random sample will include so many supposed NRA members.

Looking at who financed the poll... Can you say cherry picked data?

I believe that the best way to counter such propaganda, is to expose the poll for what it is: Biased questions with a biased and hand picked dataset. The place to do this is in the same papers that publish the poll.
 
Antipitas has an excellent report - I went and read the PDF and PPT of the report. I can't find the sampling method.

If this were a professional piece, as some gun surveys are done, the sampling method would be reported in detail.

However, not to be a downer, I still think the reports that gun owners support some of the measures mentioned is in the ball park.

* 86 percent of all gun owners believe the country can “do more to stop criminals from getting guns while also protecting the rights of citizens to freely own them.”
Click to expand...

That's the active emphasis.
 
Just look at the comments on that site to see that's the readers are pretty anti-gun-rights.

I think there's a population of gun owners that have been around for a long time and have accepted a lot of the things the VPC and others have been forcing onto society, like the notion that you can't sell your property to someone else, or that the gov should have the ability to limit your right to self defense without due process (terror watch list), or semi-autos are only for killing people. (***?)

Then, there's a new and growing group that believes in fundamental human rights, and guns just fit into the overall philosophical framework. It's my impression that several decades ago the NRA was run with the former group in mind and it's popularity plummeted. More recently it's adopted the views of the latter and the message of liberty is ringing true through its base.

Does anyone see a similar trend with the NRA base?
 
Let's say, for the sake of the argument, that truly random phone calls were placed.

The logical first question that would be asked: Are you a gun owner?

If that answer was a no, the call is terminated. If the answer is yes, then the next question is: Are you a member of the NRA? The rest of the questions would then proceed.

First, that is the only way to get 832 supposed gun owners to answer the poll. How would they really know that the people responding were in fact, gun owners?

The second question is even more highly suspect. In a nation that reports 20-30 million Americans own guns, but only 4.5 million Americans are members of the NRA, how do you get 48% of the respondents to be NRA members? The numbers are all out of proportion. The only way is to throw out the majority of the actual responses.

In other words, the entire poll has been "cherry picked."

The NRA has a little something to say about this poll, here.
 
We want everybody to learn the 4 rules. We should make all American take a course in Research Design - I just got done with that this semester. Teaching about sampling, stats and surveys.

One reason the NRA is a great organization is that they have a research branch that stays up on this stuff! Great folks - ate lunch with them once at HQ.

As Al said and the NRA analyzed, this kind of survey is from suspect sampling and questions designed to elicit certain answers without analyzing the broad spectrum of gun opinion.

It's no suprise that questions that aim at keeping guns from criminals and terrorists get high numbers. But where are the questions about wanting to own guns, the utility of guns for self-defense, etc. ?
 
The motto of Dr. Frank Lutz' The Word Doctors is quite telling, as is the name of the polling company itself: It's not what you say, it's what people hear.... Word Doctors, indeed!

I finally got around to read the survey. It is much like I said in my earlier post.

On question 3, the call was terminated if you were not a gun owner. Question 4 asked if you were an NRA member and here, the game was rigged folks! The call was to be terminated once the non-NRA sampling pool exceeded 400! No such instructions were given if the NRA pool exceeded that number.

This suggests that the poll was meant to show a preponderance of (supposed) NRA members.

However ....

An anomaly occurs with question 7 which asks: In general, do you feel that the laws covering the sale of guns should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?

48% (NRA) and 53% (non-NRA) responded to keep the laws as they are, while 35% (NRA) and 18% (non-NRA) responded the laws should be less strict. That is, 93% of the NRA respondents and 71% of the non-NRA respondents feels the current laws are just fine, if not a bit too strict now. (Please note, the poll does not differentiate between Federal, State or Local laws - just laws)

This is nowhere reported in the news blips. And why should they? They don't conform to the thrust of the poll.

In conducting this poll, Word Doctors lives up to its name and motto.
 
Jim, do you think the NRA's demographics may have shifted in the last few years?

I'll admit freely that the only reason I am an NRA member right now is:
1. I got 2 years for free about a year ago;
2. I will maintain it in the future purely to preserve my RSO credential for Appleseed purposes.

I'm still irate at them for the Orin Hatch / DC Gun ban trick they tried to pull, then trying to hijack the Gura DC-Heller case.

I keep cozy with SAF and others, but I am a fierce civil libertarian when it comes to 2A issues in general and if I had been called in that poll and did not have a reason to be associated with NRA (RSO creds needed), I would have answered "No I am not a member of the NRA."

Just sayin'. They've done a good job angering us louder firebrands.
 
This is why I consider myself a Libertarian. Making them a major party is about the only way to effectively safeguard gun rights. Not intending to promote here but it's obvious that the other two parties don't necessarily have gun owner's best interests at heart. Yes, even the Republicans, to me they seem more to adopt a "well this much is okay but no more" mentality towards gun laws. No way to be sure but it seems to me that a Libertarian government might actually try to reform some of the asinine laws currently on the books such as the Hughes amendment. Again I am not trying to promote a political party I am just calling it like I see it.

Because prohibition doesn't work
Click to expand...

Exactly. It's that simple, getting people to realize that is a different story :rolleyes:.
 
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