Gun Control: Key Data Points from Pew Research

[mjasonc]

Pew Research: Gun Control

Most of these results will come as no surprise. While I'm glad to see public opinion moving back towards something rational, I think there's also a significant warning we need to note as well. The vocal minority can't afford to rest our voice nor our wallet in defense of our 2A rights.

I would also like to see firearms based entertainment like the Top Shot television show. I think entertainment that presents firearms in a practical way helps mitigate preconceived and inaccurate notions about safety and nature of firearms for people who would not seek the education directly.

Excerpts:

"Americans are closely divided over whether it is more important to control gun ownership or protect gun rights, with the trend edging back in favor of gun rights."

"More than eight-in-ten (81%) of Americans support background checks for private and gun show sales, a position for which there is broad partisan agreement, according to our May survey. "

"The biggest difference is in the area of making contributions to activist organizations: 25% of those who prioritize gun rights say they have, at some point, contributed money to an organization that takes a position on the issue, but just 6% of those who prioritize gun control have done so, according to our May survey."

"Also, among those who prioritize gun rights, 41% say they would not vote for a candidate with whom they disagreed on gun policy, even if they agreed with the candidate on most other issues. Fewer gun control supporters (31%) say gun policy is a make-or-break voting issue for them."

"About four-in-ten Americans report having a gun in their household, either their own or someone else’s."

"The reason now cited most frequently by gun owners for having a gun is protection of their homes and families, in contrast to 1999 when the reason cited most frequently was for hunting."

"Nearly six-in-ten of those who do not have guns in their households say they would not feel comfortable with having a gun in their home and most cite worries over an accident or other safety concerns as the top reasons."

 

[Old Fart]

"The reason now cited most frequently by gun owners for having a gun is protection of their homes and families, in contrast to 1999 when the reason cited most frequently was for hunting."

Evidence of the world we now live in.

 

[mjasonc]

Now that I figured out how to post images. =)

 

[OUfan]

"The reason now cited most frequently by gun owners for having a gun is protection of their homes and families, in contrast to 1999 when the reason cited most frequently was for hunting."

Evidence of the world we now live in.

I was reading some academic literature related to social science this weekend and it offered an explanation for this and why the media favors anti-gun, interested stuff.

 

[TerryMiller]

I'm always leery of polls, so I tend to go looking for the "internals" of the polls, which generally describe who was polled, how many, where, and many times the questions themselves.

On one of their polls for determining who "favored" background checks, I found this:

Broad Support for Renewed Background Checks

Broad Support for Renewed Background Checks Bill, Skepticism about Its Chances
Gun Rights Proponents More Likely to Vote on Issue


About the Survey

The analysis in this report is based on telephone interviews conducted May 1-5, 2013 among a national sample of 1,504 adults, 18 years of age or older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia (751 respondents were interviewed on a landline telephone, and 753 were interviewed on a cell phone, including 401 who had no landline telephone). The survey was conducted by interviewers at Princeton Data Source under the direction of Princeton Survey Research Associates International. A combination of landline and cell phone random digit dial samples were used; both samples were provided by Survey Sampling International. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Respondents in the landline sample were selected by randomly asking for the youngest adult male or female who is now at home. Interviews in the cell sample were conducted with the person who answered the phone, if that person was an adult 18 years of age or older. For detailed information about our survey methodology, see http://people-press.org/methodology/

The combined landline and cell phone sample are weighted using an iterative technique that matches gender, age, education, race, Hispanic origin and nativity and region to parameters from the 2011 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and population density to parameters from the Decennial Census. The sample also is weighted to match current patterns of telephone status and relative usage of landline and cell phones (for those with both), based on extrapolations from the 2012 National Health Interview Survey. The weighting procedure also accounts for the fact that respondents with both landline and cell phones have a greater probability of being included in the combined sample and adjusts for household size among respondents with a landline phone. Sampling errors and statistical tests of significance take into account the effect of weighting. The following table shows the unweighted sample sizes and the error attributable to sampling that would be expected at the 95% level of confidence for different groups in the survey:

5-23-13 #15

Sample sizes and sampling errors for other subgroups are available upon request.

In addition to sampling error, one should bear in mind that question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of opinion polls.


Note the text in bold. They have admitted looking for the youngest in the household, those that I would think would be less likely to have objective knowledge of the topic of background checks. This leads me to wonder about the accuracy once the numbers are extrapolated for the country as a whole from a sampling of about 1500.