“What Gives?”: Public Policy Polling Found Wide Majority In Favor Of Assault Weapons Ban, Gallup A Majority Against
Ten days ago, Daily Kos commissioned Public Policy Polling to field a poll on a variety of topics related to guns. One of the simplest questions we asked—just eight words long—was this:
Would you support or oppose banning assault weapons?
Even though our survey oversampled gun owners considerably, respondents said they favored such a ban by a broad 63-32 margin. Now, you might wonder if the people we polled know what exactly an assault weapon is, what a ban might cover, and whether such a ban would even be effective.
Those are all legitimate questions, but regardless of how well-informed our respondents might be, they stated a preference in response to a simple, clear question—and as we move forward, the public debate on this question will indeed generally be referred to, by politicians and the press, as “a ban on assault weapons.” In other words, we framed our question to reflect the rubric people will hear when they tune into the news.
Contrast our approach with Gallup’s, which also released some new data on gun issues. Here’s their assault weapons question:
Are you for or against a law which would make it illegal to manufacture, sell or possess semiautomatic guns known as assault rifles?
By a 51-44 spread, Gallup’s respondents oppose such a ban—which is actually a little tighter than the 53-43 against they found the last time they asked this question (in Oct. of 2011). No matter what, though, that’s wildly different from the huge numbers PPP sees in favor of such a ban. So what gives?
Well, frankly, Gallup’s question sucks. It’s too long, too wordy, and too confusing. As I noted above, for decades, this public policy issue has been described—by supporters and opponents alike—as an assault weapons ban. Everyone knows what the word “ban” means. So why complicate things with legalistic phrasing like “illegal to manufacture, sell or possess”? Normal people don’t talk that way. Hell, even abnormal people like Beltway pundits don’t talk that way.
The final part of the question is problematic, too. Gallup wants the phrase “semiautomatic guns known as assault rifles” to be interpreted as “the sub-set of semiautomatic guns that encompasses assault rifles.” That alone is too verbose and requires too much mental processing. Does it really help anyone to give this extended definition? Put another way: I can think of no good reason to not just say “assault rifles” and eliminate the part about “semiautomatic guns.”
But it would also be all too easy for someone to come away with the impression that Gallup is saying “semiautomatic guns, which are also known as assault rifles.” In response to that, you might think, “Hell no! ‘Assault rifle’ is not a synonym for ‘semiautomatic gun!'” Or you might think, “Hmm. This proposal sounds way too broad. Now we’re calling all semiautomatic guns ‘assault rifles?'”
Oh, and one more thing: Why assault rifles? Again, it’s always been referred to as an assault weapons ban. No one’s ever talked about banning rifles or other long guns used for hunting, so if your mind happened to focus on the word “rifle” instead of “assault,” you might think the questioner was asking whether hunting weapons should be made illegal.
Even if you think all these various chains of thought are ridiculous or stupid, well, it’s just very easy for one human to misunderstand another—especially a stranger calling on the phone who’s trying to get through an interview as quickly as possible. That’s why pollsters should always strive for maximal simplicity when they ask questions. That’s not always possible—sometimes you can’t get useful data without first offering a bit of explanation—but even then, there are better ways to do so on this topic than the way Gallup did.
But I don’t think extra verbiage is necessary at all here—as demonstrated by the fact that a mere five percent of respondents to PPP’s question said they were undecided. “Assault weapons” is a phrase people have heard (and, lately, have heard all too often). And whether people have a perfect understanding of the matter or not, citizens are allowed to express their opinions. You could try to craft a question which offered more background on what an assault weapons ban might mean, but Gallup certainly didn’t do that.
What they did, instead, is cloud the issue with a confusingly-worded question. If they’d adopted the phrasing we instructed PPP to use, I bet they’d find similar numbers to what we saw. And that’s a broad majority in favor of a ban on assault weapons.
By: David Nir, Daily Kos, December 28, 2012
“And Bullets Keep Raining Down”: Too Many People Who Should Not Have Guns, Do
On the day after the recent massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, CT, police in Newport Beach, CA, took a man into custody for allegedly firing more than 50 rounds from a semi-automatic handgun in the parking lot of a shopping mall. He aimed into the air and no one was hit, though one person was hurt slightly while running away. Police say 42-year-old Marcos Gurrola was destitute and frustrated with his circumstances. Firing dozens of rounds at the sky was his way of venting.
If there is a more apt metaphor for where this nation now finds itself than some fool standing befuddled as bullets rain down about him, one finds it hard to imagine.
Come, then. Let us weep for the 20 children shot to pieces by the young man who invaded their elementary school wielding semi-automatic weapons. Let us mourn for the six adults who could not save the children, could not save themselves, who died as the children died, shot multiple times at close range. Let us whisper our sorrows and shed our tears. Let us stagger against one another in our mountainous grief. Let us light our candles and leave them at makeshift shrines to be cared for by the uncaring sun and rain.
But let us also understand these as acts of moral masturbation, in that they satisfy some need, yet have no chance of producing anything of lasting consequence. Let us not pretend our sorrow in this moment means a damn thing or changes a damn thing, because it doesn’t and won’t. Not until or unless the American nation is finally willing to confront its unholy gun love.
The parameters of this argument have not changed for generations. On the one side are people who enjoy hunting for sport or sustenance and people who, when bad guys come through the door, want to have more in their hands than just hands. They are, by and large, decent and responsible individuals who know and respect guns and resent any suggestion that they are not trustworthy to own them.
On the other side are equally decent and responsible people who think we ought to take reasonable steps to ensure that children, emotionally disturbed individuals and violent felons have no access to guns, people who believe no hunter requires 30 rounds to bag a deer and no homeowner not expecting to be attacked by a band of ninjas has need of an AK-47 to protect her property.
There is, you will notice, nothing about one side of that argument that precludes the other. Reasonable people who had their country’s best interests at heart could have bridged the distance between the two many dead bodies ago.
Such people are, unfortunately, in woefully short supply.
What are rather more plentiful are lawmakers in thrall to the gun lobby and to an ideology that finds more to fear in a paranoid fantasy (jackbooted government thugs coming to seize your guns) than in an objective reality (innocent people repeatedly, senselessly, unnecessarily dying).
Is this where that changes? Maybe.
Certainly the magnitude of what happened in Newtown seems to have imposed a rare lucidity upon the debate. One sees Sen. Joe Manchin, conservative Democrat from West Virginia and a staunch ally of the NRA, calling for gun control, and it is cause for hope.
Then one hears Sen. Joe Lieberman suggest that videogames may have played a role in the shooting. And Mike Huckabee says maybe it happened because the government no longer mandates prayer in schools. And Bob McDonnell, Virginia’s Republican governor, suggests the teachers should have been armed (as if the problem is that there were too few guns in that school). And hope chokes.
We have paid and continue to pay an obscene price for this lesson some of us obstinately refuse to learn. We paid it in Tucson, AZ, and we paid it on the campus of Virginia Tech. We paid it at Columbine High and at a midnight showing of a Batman movie in Aurora, CO. We’ve paid it in Compton, CA, and Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Norcross,GA, We’ve paid it in Gilbert, AZ, Bechtelsville, PA, Prince George’s County, MD, Bay City, TX, Copley, OH, and Lauderdale Lakes and North Miami, FL.
Now we pay it in Newtown, in the blood of teachers and young children. We have paid more than enough.
And our choice could not be more clear. We can continue with acts of moral masturbation. We can harrumph and pontificate about how the problem is videogames or the problem is a lack of prayer or the problem is too few guns.
Or we can finally agree that the problem is obvious: too many people who should not have guns, do.
Unless we achieve the simple courage to reach that consensus, nothing else we do will change anything. Let us weep, let us mourn. Let us whisper sorrow and shed tears. Meanwhile, frightened children return to school in Newtown.
And bullets keep raining down.
By: Leonard Pitts, The National Memo, December 24, 2012
“Guns Are Different”: It’s Long Past Time We Started Treating Them That Way
It’s safe to say that we’ve had more of a national discussion about guns in the last four days than we’ve had in the last 15 years. The particular measures to address gun violence that are now in the offing run from those that are well-intended but likely to be ineffectual (renewing the assault weapons ban, for instance) to some that could have a more meaningful effect even if they’re difficult to implement (universal background checks, licensing, and training). But the most useful change that may come out of this moment in our history is a change in the way we look at guns.
By that I don’t mean that Americans will suddenly stop fetishizing guns, or that everyone will agree they’re nothing but trouble. But if we’re lucky, perhaps we could come to an agreement on something simple. Yes, our constitution guarantees that people can own guns, much as many of us wish it didn’t. But even in the context of that freedom, we should be able to agree that guns are different. The freedom to own guns is different from other freedoms, and guns are different from other products. A sane society should be able to acknowledge that difference and use it to guide the choices it makes.
If you say, “I want a gun,” the rest of us can say, OK, you have that right. But guns pose a potentially lethal danger, so that means we need a special set of rules to deal with them. After all, we do this already. If you want a car, you can’t just get one. First, you have to prove to your state that you are competent to drive it. Then you have to register it with the government, and you have to get insurance for it. We agree to this more restrictive set of rules for cars than for televisions or refrigerators because what you do with a car affects other people. Cars are dangerous. Used improperly, they can kill people.
Would it be so hard for gun owners to admit that guns are different? After all, their unique ability to kill is the whole attraction. Nobody buys guns because they make a pleasing noise. They buy them because they can kill. That’s their entire purpose. Sometimes that purpose is used for good, sometimes for ill, but killing is what guns are for. Even if you think you’ll only use your gun to scare off robbers, it’s the gun’s ability to kill that makes it possible for you to scare off a robber with it.
The most extreme gun owners seem to believe not only that their right to amass weaponry should be unlimited, but that they shouldn’t even have to suffer the tiniest of inconveniences in the exercising of that right. If every time you wanted to buy a gun you had to go down to the local police station to register the gun you’re buying, and even be photographed and fingerprinted if you haven’t already, it could indeed be a bit of a hassle—it might even take a whole hour. But I think most responsible gun owners would find it perfectly tolerable to treat the exercising of their right to buy guns much like we treat the exercising of the right to buy a car. When you buy a gun, you’ve put the life of everyone in your community into your hands. The rest of us have to live with your possession of lethal force and the threat it could pose to us. Is it too much to ask for you to endure a bit of inconvenience? Because guns are different, and it’s long past time we started treating them that way.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, December 17, 2012
“For Those Of Us Who Remain”: Here Is Where We Start On A National Gun Policy
In the wake of Friday’s gruesome tragedy, in which a presumably mentally ill shooter killed 26 Americans in an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut—including 20 children between the ages of six and seven—it has never been more evident that our nation’s gun laws are in desperate need of reform.Thanks to years of relentless propaganda by the National Rifle Association (NRA) the American people no longer care much for the phrase “gun control,” but they do support specific policy proposals in overwhelming numbers. For example, swing-state exit-polling data from the 2012 election indicates that 90 percent of gun owners support requiring background checks on all gun sales, including private sales. Republican pollster Frank Luntz has conducted additional surveys showing broad support for common-sense gun laws even among NRA members.
This does not mean that the road to better gun policy is going to be easy, but it does suggest that progress can be made, particularly after President Obama’s inspiring remarks last night, in which he promised to use the full power of his office to ensure that mass shootings like Newtown do not occur again.
There is no doubt we need broad changes to our nation’s gun laws. Here are three ways to start reforming our policy.
First, every purchaser of a firearm should be subject to a background check through the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). Currently, an estimated 40 percent of guns sales are made by private individuals (at gun shows, over the Internet, through classified advertisements, etc.) who have no legal duty to subject purchasers to background checks or maintain records of sale. What is the purpose of having a NICS database with millions of disqualifying records if prohibited purchasers can simply circumvent the system? It would be the equivalent of having optional security screening at our airports, with a second line for folks who simply wish to bypass the scanners. In this Information Age, NICS checks are typically completed in a matter of minutes, and they can be administered by any one of the nation’s more than 50,000 federally licensed firearm dealers.
Second, while it is important to understand that the vast majority of those who suffer from mental illness will never be dangerous, a more effective approach to preventing persons that are a danger to themselves or others from acquiring firearms is needed. Under current law, only individuals who have been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric institution or formally adjudicated as “mental defectives” (the law was written in 1968) are prohibited from buying firearms. This standard tells us little about who might be dangerous and allows people to acquire firearms who should never get close to a gun. Keep in mind, too, that firearms are used in half of all completed suicides in the U.S. It is time to bring mental-health providers, law-enforcement officials, and other experts to the table to see if there are new or additional criteria that will more fairly balance privacy and public safety concerns.
For instance, Indiana allows law enforcement to remove firearms from someone that they suspect may be a danger to themselves or others and a court will evaluate the situation in 14 days. California requires that a person subject to a 72-hour psychological hold because there is probable cause to believe the person is a danger to self or others be prevented from purchasing or possessing a firearm for five years unless the person can prove his or her competency.
Third, we need to renew the federal ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. The ban expired at the end of 2004 and, according to an extensive analysis of mass shootings by Mother Jones, such events have increased in frequency since that time. Regarding the Bushmaster rifle used in the Sandy Hook shooting, while Connecticut does ban certain assault weapons, the breadth of the law falls far short of a state like California, where that rifle would have been strictly prohibited. California should be the model for a new federal law. There is no need for a weapon designed for battlefield use and easily outfitted with magazines holding up to 100 rounds of ammunition to be legally available in our neighborhoods.
Despite the conventional wisdom, I would argue that the National Rifle Association is not a significant obstacle to these reforms. The political equation had changed on guns. As this publication’s own Paul Waldman has shown, the NRA’s ability to affect elections cycles is minimal and it should be completely evident to any student of politics that the NRA got its butt kicked in the 2012 cycle, in which it went “all in.” They were unable to defeat President Obama; lost seven of eight Senate races where they spent more than $100,000; and endorsed 17 of the 30 House incumbents who were defeated. In addition, NRA lackeys in Congress now have a well-funded opponent in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose new Independence USA PAC managed to knock off a handful of NRA-supported candidates.
The policies I have recommended will take time to work and they won’t stop every gun death (nor could any policy), but they certainly would put us on a path to a safer society. With our president now leading the way, it is time to stop making our children pay the ultimate price for our nation’s immoral gun laws.
By: Josh Horwitz, The American Prospect, December 17, 2012
“Only For The Terrorists Among Us”: Assault Weapons Are Weapons Of Mass Destruction And Should Be Banned
The tragedy in Connecticut forces America to confront a simple question: Why should we allow easy access to a weapon of mass destruction just because it could conceivably be referred to as a “gun”?
I count myself among the many Americans who at various points in their lives have owned and used long guns — hunting rifles and shotguns — for hunting and target shooting. No one I know in politics seriously proposes that ordinary Americans be denied the right to own those kinds of weapons.
But guns used for hunting have nothing in common with assault weapons like the ones that were used last week in the mass murder of 20 first-graders — except the fact that they are referred to “guns.”
Rapid-fire assault weapons with large clips of ammunition have only one purpose: the mass slaughter of large numbers of human beings. They were designed for use by the military to achieve that mission in combat — and that mission alone.
No one argues that other combat weapons like rocket-propelled grenades (RPG’s) or Stinger Missiles should be widely available to anyone at a local gun shop. Why in the world should we allow pretty much anyone to have easy access to assault weapons?
Every politician in America will tell you they will move heaven and earth to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists. Yet we have allowed the ban on this particular weapon of mass destruction to expire. As a result, a terrorist named Adam Lanza was able to have easy access to the assault weapons he used to kill scores of children in minutes.
Let’s be clear, Adam Lanza was a terrorist just as surely as he would have been if we were motivated by an extreme jihadist ideology. It makes no difference to those children or to their grieving families whether their loved ones were killed by someone who was mentally deranged or by someone who believed that by killing children he was helping to destroying the great Satan.
When an individual is willing — or perhaps eager — to die making a big “statement” by killing many of his fellow human beings, it doesn’t matter what their motivation is. It does matter whether they have easy access to the weapons that make mass murder possible.
And after last week, can anyone seriously question whether assault weapons are in fact weapons of mass destruction? If Lanza had conventional guns — or like a man in China who recently went berserk, he only had knives — he would not have been physically capable of killing so many people in a few short minutes.
Of course you hear people say — oh, a car or an airliner can be turned into a weapon of mass destruction — many things can become weapons of mass destruction. And there is no question after 9/11 that we know that this is true. But cars and airliners have to be converted from their primary use in order to become instruments of mass death. It takes an elaborate plot and many actors to take over an airliner and it isn’t easy to methodically kill 27 people with a car.
More important, assault weapons have no redeeming social value or alternative use whatsoever. The only reason to purchase an assault weapon, instead of a long gun used for target practice or hunting, is to kill and maim large numbers of human beings.
And it is not the case that if assault weapons were banned ordinary people would get them anyway. We certainly don’t take that attitude with nuclear weapons or dirty bombs. We make it very hard for a terrorist to get nuclear weapons or dirty bomb. It used to be hard to get assault weapons.
When the former President of Mexico visited the United States some time ago to discuss the drug-fueled violence on the Mexican border, he pointed out that the end of the assault weapons ban in the U.S. had resulted in an explosion of smuggling of assault weapons from the United States to Mexico. Weapons that were previously unavailable in large numbers, became plentiful. He begged the United States to re-impose the assault weapons ban.
Allowing easy access to assault weapons guarantees that terrorists, criminals and mentally unstable people will use them to commit future acts of mass murder — it’s that simple. There are seven billion people on the planet. Try as we may, we are not going to prevent some of those seven billion people from becoming terrorists, criminals or mentally unstable. Why make it easy for them to do harm to their fellow human beings by giving them easy access to a weapon of mass destruction?
Since this tragedy, there have been calls for greater restrictions and background checks on those who can buy guns — and there should be. But from all accounts, the weapons used in the Connecticut murders were purchased legally by the shooter’s mother — who herself appeared to be perfectly sane right up to the moment that Lanza used those same weapons to end her life.
The NRA will no doubt repeat its mantra about the “slippery slope.” “If we ban assault weapons, shotguns will be next,” they say. Really? By banning anyone from buying Stinger Missiles that are used to shoot down airplanes do we make it more likely that the government will one day prevent people from hunting ducks?
The simple fact is that no right is absolute because rights come into conflict with each other. Your free speech does not give you the right to cry “fire” in a crowded theater.
Is the NRA’s concern that banning assault weapons will put us on a “slippery slope” more important than the lives of those 20 first graders? Should it really take precedence over the fact that today in Newtown, Connecticut there are 20 families with holiday presents on a closet shelf, that were purchased for an excited six-year-old who will never open them?
Are the NRA’s fears more important than the terror faced by children in the Sandy Hook Elementary school last week?
Does the right to own an assault weapon take precedence over the right of those parents to see their children grow up, and graduate from college, and stand at the alter to be married, and have children of their own?
The bottom line is that there is no reason why weapons of mass destruction of any sort – chemical weapons, biological weapons, RPG’s, improvised explosive devices (IED’s), missiles, dirty bombs, nuclear devices, or assault weapons — should be easily accessible. For 10 years there was a ban on the production, ownership and use of assault weapons in the United States until Congress and the Bush Administration allowed it to lapse when it sunset and came up for reauthorization in 2004.
A serious response to the tragedy in Connecticut requires that Congress act to reinstate the assault weapons ban before the children of other families fall victim to the fantasies of some other mentally unbalanced individual — or the ideology of a terrorist who has been empowered by our failure to act.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post Blog, December 17, 2012
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