“The man who shot Rep. Steve Scalise, congressional staffers and two Capitol Police officers may have been able to clear a background check and obtain his firearms legally. The Pulse shooter was also a legal gun owner. To truly tackle the gun violence epidemic, lawmakers must go further — after the guns themselves. Our polling also found that a majority of Americans, 54 percent, want to see fewer guns in circulation, and 61 percent believe that guns should be harder to get. A majority, including Americans who live in gun households, also favor bold proposals that would dramatically reduce the number of guns on our streets.” – Igor Volsky and Mark Glaze in Fewer guns that are harder to get: Aim for stronger laws [via orlandosentinel.com]

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

83 COMMENTS

  2. Lies. Damned Lies. And Statistics.

    And where was the source of the poll? The Orlando Sentinel office?

    Another example of the progressive echo chamber.

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        Sounds like a trustworthy, objective source.

        http://psbresearch.com/work/#strategic-communications

        • In other words (truth in advertising)
          “We will fraudulently make up polls to support your bigoted, tyrannical lies”.

          If the leftists would stop interfering, between constitutional carry and CCW gun violence would naturally go down. Statistically, most gun violence is in poor neighborhoods in democrat controlled cities. Let the law abiding in those areas make it dangerous for the criminals.

          Too much common sense,

  3. There once was a day a majority of Americans wanted slavery too…

    Then we had a civil war, what can we learn from this?

      • More importantly it was to prevent tyranny by a DEMOCRATIC majority, that is: 50% of the voters, plus 1 vote. This was the majority they feared and believed destroyed every other democracy in history – when a BARE majority discovered they could vote themselves largess at the expense of the 50% minus one vote.

        It is a very good thing that the Founding Fathers, in devising the Bill of Rights, covered this base:

        L. Neil Smith: “The freedom to own and carry the weapon of your choice is a natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional [protected] right — SUBJECT NEITHER TO THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS NOR TO ARGUMENTS GROUNDED IN SOCIAL UTILITY.” [Emphasis mine]

        • No mention of voters in this article. Because the authors know damn well their efforts, if put to an actual vote, would fail miserably. And don’t refer to America as a Democracy. It isn’t. The numbers of votes don’t affect squat. The final decision is made by electoral colleges. This is a holdover from an era when only propertied white men decided elections, and this is probably still true today. Any democracy the CIA got hold of, was rapidly turned into a dictatorship, with regular torture and murder of opponents. America is against democracy anywhere, always has been. If in doubt, visit the School of the Americas, where future dictators and torturers are trained by the CIA. There is some democracy on a local and state level, but on a national level, not much. If you don’t like it, you can try and change it. Maybe you should.

  4. Ah, good ole Slantinel. Still living up to its rep as a progtard rag, lips firmly planted on the mouse’s ass.

    Meh.

    “Our polling also found that a majority of Americans, 54 percent, want to see fewer guns in circulation, and 61 percent believe that guns should be harder to get.”

    Yah, we all know whose households you specially selected for yer polling. Nudge nudge, wink, wink!

    • Yeah. I went to post a response to their gun control article at their web site, but I can only do so if I am a paid subscriber to their service. Ewwww.

      They don’t want to hear from anyone that isn’t paying for their propaganda. Figures.

    • “Our polling also found . . .”

      That’s the problem right there. Activists and politicians love to pretend that survey research is scientifically accurate. It rarely is and is almost always compromised when the subjects being examined are highly politicized—like gun control is. Basically, you can correlate anything with anything else. Hang a few methodological bells and whistles on your “data” and you can pretend that you have empirical validity. Happens all the time.

      • The key indicator here is the giveaway “Our polling…” rather than “Independent non-partisan polling…”

      • Actually you can’t claim to have validity without lying. The problem is that not very many people know how to read poll internals so that they can call these people out.

        During the election I caught a large number of flawed polls and dismissed them. For example one poll that was part of the RCP average which claimed +9 for HRC in Florida. Looking at the internals I knew it was bullshit because if you expanded the sample to the population of the state there simply were not enough women, college educated people, or blacks living in the state. I posted some of this info right here on TTAG at the time.

        Each of those demographics was so oversampled that it was obvious at a glance (and confirmable via census data in a matter of minutes).

        On election night the folks on Fox were shocked. I wasn’t. DJT won exactly the way I predicted he could (with the exception of Colorado). How did I know that? I looked at the internals and knew the polls in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan were intentionally flawed. Meanwhile S. Carolina, Georgia and some others were flawed but not to the point I can say with confidence that it was purposefully done.

        Good polling is a true art. Rasmussen does it pretty well. Basically everyone else was in the tank for HRC and pushing the whole “He’s a joke” narrative. We know this to be true thanks to the Podesta hack.

        • It’s real hard to call them on their internals when they won’t release them, which is often the case. Gun grabbers often have “studies” whose authors refuse to reveal their data and only vaguely describe their methodology.

        • While I acknowledge that became a problem with this past election usually they do release the internals you just have to know how to find them.

          Any poll that fails completely, as some did this past year, to release internals isn’t worth reading. The ONLY reason not to release your internals is that they show you rigged the poll and you know this. Ergo, failure to produce internals is flat out prima facie evidence of tomfuckery and an open admission that said poll is garbage/rigged.

          As for the studies, that information is very available provided you belong to the proper journal, have access to a university library or are willing to pay for a copy.

          • It’s been happening for a while with “scholarly” articles that have pro-gun conclusions. Anyone who hides their methodology is not engaged in a scientific or scholarly endeavor. They are engaged in business or propaganda (with all its negative connotations).

          • There could be a legitimate claim that the exact poll wording and techniques are trade secrets, and that they don’t want to share effective details that their supposed experts have developed that give them a competitive edge. While that certainly opens them to criticism that the poll was rigged, it would be a reason why they might not want to release too much information even if they tried to get an honestly representative result.

            Not that it seems likely in this case, given their website where they essentially advertise themselves as propagandists.

  6. 54 percent of Americans? Even with record numbers of Democrats buying guns?
    yeah….. let me see those numbers on that study.

  8. A survey with skewed questions to get an expected result. Of course Americans don’t want criminals with guns, at the same time these questions are so vauge those measures could mean anything from ominous to everyone laws like California or something like Florida’s 10-20-life that targets real criminals aggressively.

  9. It’s hard to believe anything glaze says after the lies he spewed all over tucker Carlson on Tucker’s show regarding the “gun tax.”

  10. The number of people who think it is proper to add to gun owner control is irrelevant. To keep and bear arms, as RF constantly repeats, is a natural, civil, and Constitutionally protected right. Would this writer listen to a majority of Americans who wanted to infringe on the right of a free press? Free speech? I don’t think so.

  11. Double down, progtards. Make the Donald president a second time.

    It’s like the left got together and had a meeting and decided they were through and now they just had to make it happen. It’s like they’re actually following a self destruction game plan.

    • “You have to get out and vote because this poll proves most people want to take your stuff away.” – The argument that this sort of poll allows Trump to make.

  12. A poll done for a Twitter/Facebook activist page by a hired flack/PR company and reported as “NEWS” by a liberal newspaper. This is my surprised face.

  13. A. My rights aren’t subject to the whims of polls or the tyranny of mob-rule democracy.

    B. So much for the old “nobody wants to take away your guns” canard.

  14. Hey snowflake, you mean like the overbearing gun control laws in commie kalifornia? Yep, those have stopped the nut jobs and criminals cold. IDIOT.

  15. No matter how difficult they make it for law abiding people to buy a gun, the criminals will never have a problem getting them.

    • Even if they did have a problem getting them that won’t stop them from resorting to other means. A machete is less than what $10-15 from virtually any hardware store, and although it doesn’t have the efficacy of a gun the chance of the police stopping someone before they kill some people is pretty low IMO.

  16. Well, guns should be harder to get. I don’t like it that police confiscate so many guns or are issued so many guns which subsequently are “lost” or “stolen.” Those all end up in urban gangs’ hands, who commit most of the violent crime.

    Repeal, and don’t replace, most laws that allow the government to confiscate people’s guns. Hold gun laundering criminal cops accountable for the guns they introduce into the black market. That should put a decent dent in the availability of guns to people who actually commit criminal violence.

  17. Funny, i dont remember being asked.
    My reply would have been, no i do not think we need more gun control. We need more criminal control, more snowflake control, and more antifa control.

  19. Ya, 99% of the people I surveyed said you should STFU, the other 1% are rethinking their priorities.

    Some people are broken, others are F’d up on pupose.

    Some people are both and work for the orlando sentinel.

    Ever since TX started growing oranges, we don’t need sh_t out of FL.

  20. “bold proposals that would dramatically reduce the number of guns on our streets”

    Such as “boldly and decisively” arresting, prosecuting, and actually locking up armed thugs who commit crimes?

  21. 50% of the people they polled.

    99% of gun owners don’t take polls or answer questions from anti gun nut jobs.

    SO…. Statistically speaking, that means that even the people who are predominantly anti gun, half of them are against more laws.
    So if everyone were polled the results would show a 2% approval rate for more laws.

    psh, statistics.

  22. 5 out of 4 anti-gunners couldn’t do math if THIER precious snowflake life’s depended on it. SHALL NOT INFRINGE, sure as hell doesn’t mean “well if some liberal rag of a magazine poll says different……” Sure the people they polled were in the office and other family members. God forbid if they actually did some real investigation. My favorite quote about why we shouldn’t have concealed carry is that if you start carrying a gun, then the criminals will start carrying guns………these people are truly ignorant. Lord help us!

  23. “as police have always known, a gun in the home is more likely to be used to kill or injure an innocent person than an intruder”

    Because the objective of the armed defender is to stop the crime, not to kill or injure the intruder. Appears that the typical gun owner shows appropriate restraint when confronting intruders.

  24. And this poll was brought to you by the same people that said Hillary was winning the Presidency

  26. Most people don’t know what current laws are. Even gun owners are often clueless. Asking an ignorant population what it thinks about what it doesn’t understand is pointless. Unless of course you want witch trials to come back.

  27. Here’s a bold proposal that would dramatically reduce the number of guns on our streets: Hang gangbangers from the nearest lamp post to where you find them.

    Too bold?

  28. And 99% of polls had the Hildebeast winning. Nobody asked me or anyone I know. MY rights are NOT dependant on YOUR FU opinion…

  29. >>Our polling also found

    Any person refering to “their” polls should either provide a source or be convicted to playing through L3 of classic Battletoads for rest of their lives. Found no trace of that poll on GD website, and no link in the article.

  31. Is Shannon’s Sugar Daddy receiving fair value for his investment in little Iggy and little Markey? I believe those incorrigible scamps are taking advantage of an elderly, wealthy, intolerant, anti-civil rights bigot. Over 100 million NICS checks during the 8 year reign of terror of the most anti-gun president this country has ever had, and this is the best those two can come up with? The Hysterical Mother should spank them soundly and sent them to bed without their supper!

    • This is the really decisive point. For the sake of argument, we could stipulate that 51% or 99% of voters “want” fewer guns. Yet, we could still add 1 million guns per month to the national stock in civilian hands. So long as the stock keeps rising at such a rate, what difference would opinion make? Elect the “right” (i.e., “left”) candidates to office? That would only increase the rate of growth in the civilian stock.

      Prohibition of alcohol was established with something close to majority support; and, repealed by minority defiance. Pot was prohibited with majority support; and, that too is being repealed by Nullification.

      Would anti-gun sentiment continue to support gun-control if they understood how futile their cause is?

  32. if you don’t want guns left in the street star donation large gun safes to gun owners, I do my very best to keep them from walk in around in the street, but sometimes they want to go out walking while i sleep.

  34. I attempted to post there, but laughably they needed some money in order for me to do so. I laughed harder when they charged money to have your comments placed at the top.

    I tried to post this:
    So these are the main ideas/arguments of this article that I gathered:

    1) Legal gun ownership is the problem. So much for that “nobody is trying to take your guns” cliché. There are too many guns out there. Too many people own too many guns, and we would like to exercise our tolerance by taking them from you for the purposes of satisfying a category of deaths that we have created that could be solved otherwise, but wouldn’t satisfy our goals (Banning ownership of guns for the plebs).

    2) More governmental control is the answer. More laws. Bans. Gradual and incremental confiscation like a glacial creep on a wide scale exercised individually. Are vans going to drive door to door and take guns? Nope. A small law will be implemented, and ever so slowly law enforcement would enforce said disarmament law on individuals over time, incriminating them for merely owning/possessing something. Are there any victims other than people getting their guns stolen from the state and facing prosecution? Nope. But these people offended the state and the gun grabbers, and thus must be prosecuted.

    3) We have statistics (don’t ask how or where we got them) that show that lots of people, some even majorities believe and feel “X” – so you need to believe and feel “X” too. We promise we didn’t ask “leading questions during the poll.”
    https://www.youtube.Com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

    4) Guns don’t mitigate violence. To this I agree. But by omission, they don’t say that guns don’t create violence. Which is also true. In fact, a gun is a machine that does nothing at all on it’s own, and the individual commits violence. That individual can commit violence with or without a gun, thus violence is independent of guns.

    5) Guns are the problem, not the mentality of people. By complete omission, they never say anything about the culture or mentality of people committing violence (with guns or otherwise). They conceal that two-thirds of 32,000 of people are suicides that may very well have ended the same by another means. They conceal that the remaining one-third are homicides that may very well have ended the same by another means. They completely conceal the responsibility of the individual, their upbringing, their culture, their education, and instead highlight their possession of a gun and then endorse and recognize that as the problem while ignoring all other complexities of life. Their solution? A reduction of freedom and a reduction of responsibility.

    • A small victimless crime gets elevated to felony status. Same small law is ignored for a while. Then a cry goes up to start enforcing existing laws. Small law now gets enforced, gun owner is now a convicted felon and in the prohibited person category. No more guns for that person.

      Lather-rinse-repeat

  35. If you live in a free state, gun control propagandists are doing God’s work. Their fake crap deludes leftist pols into thinking gun control is a winning issue. Keep on dropping falling knives and cooked grenades the leftist politicians love to catch, guys!

  36. Polls prior to the election said Hillary would win. How did that turn out? So, you can take your little poll and GFY. Have a nice day.

    • They think she did win, but the election was “stolen” – first by the Electoral College, (which they seem to think is some recent scheme enacted by the nasty Republicans to cheat,) and then by Russian hacking (even though no votes were – or could be – changed, the corruption-exposing documents sent to Wikileaks were genuine, and Hillary ran on a brilliant strategy of “only campaign in safe area where the majority is already guaranteed to vote for you).

  38. Polling can be done one of two ways. The first is with the intent of discovering the truth. The second is with the intent of proving a point or gathering evidence for that point. The methods for both are basically choosing a sample and selecting questions. Either one can be done incompetently.

    If you give the same data to two professional pollsters and ask them to work independently, you will get two different results.

  40. “Our polling also found that a majority of Americans, 54 percent, want to see fewer guns in circulation, and 61 percent believe that guns should be harder to get.”

    I’m sure that David Duke’s polling finds that a majority of Black people want the 13th Amendment repealed.

    Self-serving liars tell self-serving lies, and the only bigger liars than gun control cultists are Holocaust deniers… but not by much.

    • I’ve seen a bunch of women signing a petition to end women’s suffrage. Probably because suffrage sounds like suffering.

      • Back in the ’60s, when I was going to Catholic elementary school in Apartheid Chicago, I looked at the victims of the public schools and just shook my head…

  41. So, the Guns Down poll rephrased gun control questions to illicit the guilt response and got the results the anti-gun retards were after. Surprise, not. The poll and this article are 100% pure bull offal.

  42. It’s mildly amusing to me that when antis or progs want something they point to poll numbers and speak of Democracy. Then when they don’t want something they speak of the Constitution.

    Yeah, well, we don’t live in a Democracy. We live in a Constitutional Republic. You don’t get to pick between the two forms of government based on what’s convenient today in terms of your agenda.

  44. “A majority […] favor bold proposals that would dramatically reduce the number of guns on our streets.”

    Just how does he hope to achieve this? What happens to those who choose not to comply? How about those who choose to resist with civil disobedience? Never mind those who choose to resist violently. Everyone once in a while some talking head brings up “reducing the number of gun on our streets” or “buybacks,” but they never go into the logistics of their pie in the sky machinations. The U.S. will never become Australia Mr. Volsky.

  45. People who invoke the Pulse Nightclub shooter to demand stricter gun control ought to be specific about what requirements they’d like to see. Do they want gun ownership restricted to people licensed in certain professions that demand being armed, such as security guards? Would they want gun owners to pass a psychological screening? Perhaps more than one? Maybe they should come with glowing police references?

    The Pulse Nightclub shooter was all of these things.

  46. “To truly tackle the gun violence epidemic, lawmakers must go further — after the guns themselves.”

    I am so sick of antis prefacing their arguments like this. There is no gun violence epidemic. 99.9% of the population will NOT be harmed with a gun during the coming year. This ‘epidemic’ of which he speaks effects roughly the same proportion of the population as those who have Multiple Sclerosis. Unless we have an MS ‘epidemic’ we don’t have a gun violence epidemic. Since when is ‘epidemic’ a meaningful descriptor for something that effects a fraction of a percent of the population?

    • I want less guns in circulation. I want to own all the guns in circulation. (Just kidding; they can always make more after I get all the guns in circulation).

  48. Liberal anti-gun idgits are experts in making so-called “polls” say anything they want them to say. The only problem…..everyone but them knows that they’re BS! They can continue to tout their fake polls all they want. When it comes down to people in the “real world”, truth and facts always win out.

  50. Look at the faces of the two pajama boys above the article. Both have suffered a mental orchiectomy. This country –no, NO country — was ever built by emasculated nobodies like these. One look at them and you know they have nothing downstairs, very little upstairs, and they vote Democrat every time.

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