“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
“NRA Misleads On Assault Weapons”: The ’94 Assault Weapons Ban Was Full Of Loopholes, But Studies Prove It Was Effective
As Democrats move to once again ban assault weapons and NBC host David Gregory gets investigated for using a high-capacity magazine, banned in D.C., as a prop in his interview with the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, one key question still hasn’t been properly addressed by the media thus far — did the 1994 Assault Weapon Ban actually work?
Even Gregory, who convincingly played a devil’s advocate to LaPierre Sunday, was dismissive of its effect on Sunday. “I mean the fact that that it just doesn’t work is still something that you’re challenged by if you want to approach this legislation again,” he said of the ban to New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer, a supporter of the ban.
There’s a dearth of quality empirical research on the efficacy of the ban, thanks in part to Congress’ statutory limitations on the type of gun violence research the federal government is allowed to conduct. Pro-gun lawmakers made it illegal for research agencies to advocate for gun control, which effectively means looking for any connection between guns and gun violence, but the evidence suggests the law had positive effects, if not as much as advocates would like.
The single formal assessment of the ban, as required by Congress in passing the law, was conducted by criminologists Christopher Koper, Jeffrey Roth and others at the University of Pennsylvania (Koper is now at George Mason). The National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Department of Justice, paid for the evaluation, which was first conducted in 1999 and updated in 2004, and looked at everything from homicide rates to gun prices.
A few key findings emerged. Overall, banned guns and magazines were used in up to a quarter of gun crimes before the ban. Assault pistols were more common than assault rifles in crimes. Large-capacity magazines, which were also prohibited, may be a bigger problem than assault weapons. While just 2 to 8 percent of gun crimes were committed with assault weapons, large-capacity magazines were used in 14 to 26 percent of of firearm crimes. About 20 percent of privately owned guns were fitted with the magazines.
But even though assault weapons were responsible for a fraction of the total number of gun deaths overall, the weapons and other guns equipped with large-capacity magazines “tend to account for a higher share of guns used in murders of police and mass public shootings,” the study found.
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone paying attention to the recent history of mass shootings. In just the past year, the same .223 Bushmaster AR-15 assault rifle was used in the Aurora, Colo., theater massacre, the shooting at the Clackamas Mall in Oregon, the Newtown elementary school shooting, and, just a few days ago, the killing of two firefighters in upstate New York. Jared Loughner used 33-round high-capacity magazines in a handgun to shoot former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and more than a dozen others. Seung-Hui Cho used a 15-round magazine to kill 32 and wound 17 at Virginia Tech in 2007.
An October 2012 study from Johns Hopkins, which looked at newer data than Koper’s, concluded that that “easy access to firearms with large-capacity magazines facilitates higher casualties in mass shootings.”
So, according to the official study, was the ban effective in stopping killings? The short answer is yes, though it’s a bit unclear because of the massive loopholes in the law. “Following implementation of the ban, the share of gun crimes involving AWs [assault weapons] declined by 17 percent to 72 percent across the localities examined for this study (Baltimore, Miami, Milwaukee, Boston, St. Louis, and Anchorage),” the Koper study concluded.
Data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) also shows a significant drop in assault weapon usage in gun crimes. In the five-year period before the enactment of the ban, the weapons constituted almost 5 percent of the guns traced by the Bureau (the ATF is responsible for tracking guns used in crimes), while they accounted for just 1.61 percent of gun traces after the ban went into effect — a drop of 66 percent. The effect accelerated over time, as the guns presumably became harder to find.
The problem with the ban, as both gun rights advocates (seeking to cast aspersions on the law) and gun control proponents (seeking to explain its limited impact) agree, is that it was weak to the point of being meaningless. As the bill made its way through Congress, gun lobbyists managed to create bigger and bigger carve-outs, the largest being the grandfathering in of guns and magazines produced and owned before the ban went into effect. The guns and magazines could also continue to be imported, as long they were produced before the law went into effect.
At that time of the ban, there were already more than 1.5 million privately owned assault weapons in the U.S. and 25 million guns equipped with large-capacity magazines. Another almost 5 million large-capacity magazines were imported during the ban. These could continue to be used and traded completely legally.
“The ban’s exemption of millions of pre-ban AWs and LCMs ensured that the effects of the law would occur only gradually. Those effects are still unfolding and may not be fully felt for several years into the future,” Koper and his colleagues added.
The other big exemption in the law was the narrow definition of what the government considers an assault weapon. The ban initially targeted 18 gun models, and then prohibited any future models that contained two or more “military-style” features. Some of these features are decidedly superficial, such as a collapsable stock or muzzle shroud, leading the NRA to dismiss the category of assault weapons as artificial and “cosmetic.” Indeed, gun manufacturers were able to legally produce and sell nearly identical guns to ones that were now prohibited by making a few minor tweaks.
Since the ban was allowed to lapse in 2004, there hasn’t been another comprehensive national study. There is, however, some encouraging data on the state level. A Washington Post analysis of gun seizures in Virginia showed a significant drop in the number of high-capacity magazines seized by police during the 10 years the ban was in effect, only for the number to return to pre-ban levels after the law expired. In 1994, the year the ban went into effect, police in the state seized 1,140 guns with high-capacity magazines. In 2004, its last year on the books, that number had dropped to 612. By 2006, it was back to over 1,000.
Garen Wintemute, the director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, Davis Medical School, looked at his state’s experience and found a troubling pattern in who purchases guns that were once banned. First, “among those purchasing handguns legally, those with criminal records were more likely than others to purchase assault-type handguns,” he told Salon. Second, “among those purchasing handguns legally who had criminal records, those purchasing assault-type handguns were much more likely than those purchasing other types of handguns to be arrested for violent crimes later.” He wasn’t able to study rifles because the state’s archive of purchases was limited to handguns.
Abroad, the data is even more convincing. In Australia, a 1996 mass shooting that left 36 dead led the conservative government to act swiftly to ban semi-automatic assault weapons with a much stronger law. They did not grandfather in old guns and paid to buy back old ones. Gun-related homicide plummeted by 59 percent between 1995 and 2006, with no corresponding increase in non-firearm-related homicides. Meanwhile, gun suicides — which are responsible for most firearm deaths in most developed countries — dropped by a whopping 65 percent. Robberies at gunpoint also dropped significantly. In the decade prior to the ban, there were 18 mass shootings. In the decade following it, there were zero.
The resounding success of the Australian model shows where the U.S.’s attempt to ban assault weapons failed. By the same token, it shows where we could succeed by implementing a real ban without the carve-outs of the the 1994 law.
By: Alex Seitz-Wald, Salon, December 26, 2012
“Beating The Odds”: Health Care, Guns And The Will To Win
For supporters of the urgent push for sensible gun laws, the fierce national battle over health care is a good example of how folks can beat the odds.
One of the most extraordinary things about the campaign to win Obamacare was the sheer will of its supporters — the ability to maintain momentum and keep going in the face of one challenge after another. The campaign for commonsense gun laws needs the same thing right now. While advocates have been slogging away for years, the horrific massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School and so many other places have created an historic opportunity for change. We cannot afford to let the momentum and attention slip away.
We can already see the obstacles. Just a few days after the National Rifle Association (NRA) had a press event where they offered a shockingly stupid and tone deaf response to the massacre in Newtown, Conn., they’re back to doing what they do best — telling everyone what they’re against. Anything that smacks of regulating guns is a bad idea, they say. The only way to end senseless firearms violence is more guns, they say.
Already the apologists for the NRA and the gun manufacturers are out in full force, explaining that there are so many factors that contribute to this problem that we can’t possibly tackle one of the solutions that’s within our reach.
This time, it appears, members of Congress are not cowering. Many former opponents of sensible gun laws are announcing their support for measures like criminal background checks for all gun-buyers and bans on military-style assault rifles and high-capacity magazines — the equipment used in the most recent mass shootings. Polls show that the public and most NRA members are on their side.
The outcome of the gun debate, as in the health care battle, will be determined by political will and the courage of individual members of Congress to stand up for what they believe to get results.
When she was Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi was a big reason we won health care. She defined what it means to be a leader. She was smart and strategic, and she got others to follow. But perhaps most importantly, in the dark days of January and February of 2010, when it looked like health reform would fall short in Congress, Pelosi was willful. She wouldn’t give up. Pelosi boldly told the American people what it would take to win — and gave us a roadmap for this fight:
We’ll go through the gate. If the gate’s closed, we’ll go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we’ll pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we’ll parachute in, but we’re going to get health care reform passed for the America people.
We must ensure that the innocent victims of Newtown and other mass shootings, along with the 12,000 people killed each year by gun violence, did not die or suffer in vain. The fallen and their families deserve better. It’s time for Congress to pole vault in and break the political inertia that leaves us all at risk.
We took on the mammoth task of reforming a broken health care system, and our political leaders beat the odds through sheer force of will. Now our leaders must use the same single-minded determination to end rampant gun violence.
By: Ethan Rome, Executive Director, Health Care for America Now, The Huffington Post, December 26, 2012
“The Prettification Of The Gun Culture”: The Pro-Gun World Is Aggressively Exploiting Female Fears To Grow Their Base
Here is something that becomes clear when you look at polling data on support for gun control laws, both after Sandy Hook and over the past several years: The same demographics that rejected Republicans in the presidential election are likeliest to support gun control, notably Latinos of both genders and women across the board.
White male Republicans in redder regions are still the base for untrammeled gun rights, even if they’re not the only ones. But when it comes to women, that number had been slowly moving in the NRA’s favor — and it’s all part of a plan.
Four years ago, 30 percent of women told Pew that gun rights were more important to them than controlling gun ownership. This April, that number was 39 percent — still less than the 60 percent of men who favored gun rights, but a dramatic rise nonetheless. And these women were likelier to be white; in the same poll, 57 percent of whites picked gun rights over gun control. African Americans and Latinos overwhelmingly told pollsters they preferred gun control.
This is why we have “Packing Pretty.” This is why we have the NRA Women’s Network. And it’s why we have “Flash Bang bra holsters.”
Nancy Lanza wasn’t the only woman who liked to shoot. For years, gun manufacturers and their political enablers have clearly recognized that they need to broaden their base. There is a saccharine-pink infrastructure built around trying to get women to pack heat, and it’s working by nearly every measure. The marketing often holds out the specter of rape as an incentive, despite the fact that the majority of rapes are perpetrated by acquaintances, and domestic violence-related deaths run along similar lines. That’s working, too: In one survey, a majority of the new female gun buyers proclaimed that they owned guns for self-defense.
That was the rationale of Regis Giles, who runs the site Girls Just Wanna Have Guns, and who gave a memorable speech at CPAC last year saying she was “sick and tired of seeing defenseless girls being abducted in broad daylight by some fruity freak who gets aroused by raping and abducting them.” (Nearly two years after I first encountered these words, I’m still confused by “fruity.”)
Giles is from a combative and visible conservative family; her sister posed as a prostitute alongside “pimp” James O’Keefe to ensnare ACORN, and her father has a shouty Christian radio show. Her commentary on last week’s tragedy — on a site framed with images of bloodstains — included “Quite frankly it is retarded that schools haven’t enforced their security measures after Columbine,” and suggestions for all school staff to be required to carry guns to work. Watch out, Wayne LaPierre: These ladies are coming for your job.
This destructive fantasy of a woman shooting down her rapist may sound more like feminist empowerment than Charlotte Allen blaming weak women for the children’s deaths, but it’s a distortion that puts more women and men at risk. All the pink holsters in the world can’t change that.
By: Irin Carmon, Salon, December 26, 2012
“But Not For Statutory Rights”: Gun Nuts Ignore The First Amendment To “Protect” The Second
Protect the Second Amendment, screw the First!
Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition calling for British CNN host Piers Morgan to be deported from the United States over his gun control views. And sadly, I’m not surprised.
Morgan has taken an aggressive stand for tighter U.S. gun laws in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., school shooting. Last week, he called a gun advocate appearing on his Piers Morgan Tonight show an “unbelievably stupid man.” And that is Mr. Morgan’s opinion, which he is entitled to, whether you like his accent or not. Entitled to, you ask? Is he a citizen of this country?! Well, there are a few folks, namely our founding forefathers, and more currently constitutional legal experts, who were pretty clear with regard to whose speech is protected by the First Amendment. Noncitizens and permanent residents are also protected under the First Amendment–that is unless, like those of us who are citizens, we’re yelling fire in a crowded theatre.
But that doesn’t seem to faze the gun rights activists. They are fighting back, creating a petition on December 21 on the White House E-petition website. This was done by a user in Texas accusing Morgan of engaging in a “hostile attack against the U.S. Constitution” by targeting the Second Amendment. It demands he be deported immediately for “exploiting his position as a national network television host to stage attacks against the rights of American citizens.” The petition has already hit the 25,000 signature threshold to get a White House response.
Unfortunately for Tex and those who signed this petition, they shouldn’t hold their breath. Noncitizens, and especially permanent residents, have statutory rights to remain in the country unless they’ve done (or there’s sufficient reason to think they’ve done) certain bad things—at least until Congress revises the statutes to broaden the grounds for deportation. Even if the Executive Branch decides to deport someone, it has to have statutorily authorized grounds, and it has to provide hearings at which an immigration judge decides whether the conditions for deportation are met. The government may not criminally punish noncitizens—or presumably impose civil liability on them—based on speech that would be protected if said by a citizen. See Bridges v. Wixon (1945).
And how has Piers Morgan responded? Actually, he seemed unfazed, perhaps even amused by all of this. On Twitter he urged his followers to sign the petition, and in response to one article about the petition he said “bring it on” as he appeared to track the petition’s progress. “If I do get deported from America for wanting fewer gun murders, are there any other countries that will have me?” he wrote.
What bothers me about this is the blatant hypocrisy of those gun rights proponents. As a liberal, I push for stricter gun control measures; I always have, even before Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tuscon, Aurora, Portland, and Newtown, and I have been attacked by the right for wanting to take away their Second Amendment right to bear arms. I and other liberals have been clear we don’t want to take their rights away, we just want to protect other Americans, especially our children by restricting military-style weapons with high volume magazine clips. Yet when someone voices their opinion and it is completely contrary to what a gun proponent believes, they have no trouble tramping on their rights…namely the First Amendment.
Look, I’m no Piers Morgan fan. As a broadcaster, I get tired of radio programmers and networks hiring people with pretty British accents. I’m a fan of not only buying American, but “hiring American,” since I know so many people out there who are unemployed in the field of broadcasting and, quite frankly many of whom I feel are much more talented and qualified interviewers and broadcasters than Mr. Morgan. I don’t make the decisions as to who they put on the air at CNN, but I do have a choice what network or program I tune into. And I can assure you, Mr. Morgan’s show is not on my list of favorites programmed on my television.
If the gun enthusiasts really want to hurt Mr. Morgan for his opinions, they should realize it’s his ratings, not his residence address they should be attacking. Because if Mr. Morgan’s ratings plummet, CNN will hand him his walking papers and as Mitt Romney once proposed, Mr. Morgan will deport himself–perhaps back over the pond for a better cup of tea.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, December 26, 2012
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