Arizona poll on guns in homes: total hogwash

There are lies and there are damn lies. There are also polls and there are polls that are total bravo sierra. One of the latter was recently given in Arizona and publicized widely. I think it was fatally flawed.

"Behavior Research Center of Arizona" (?) spoke with only 700 Arizonans in English and Spanish and found the 49 percent believe it is more important to protect gun ownership rights, including semi-automatic rifles while 38 percent want tougher controls on gun ownership and 13 percent are unsure. So far, I don't have a huge problem with those results, which parallel my own observations.

But here's the dumb part. The poll also found that 37 percent of Arizonans own 'operational' guns and keep them in their homes but a surprising 13 percent are "not sure" whether there is an operational gun in their home.

These "statistics" supposedly prove that Arizona is not a predominately gun-owning state, and the liberal news media was all over this "fact" like a duck on a June bug.

Hold on there, pardner. Let me give you a "what if" scenario. What if you are a gun owner with a gun or guns in the house. and what if you get a telephone call from "someone" wanting to know if you have an operational gun in the house. Do alarm bells ring in your head? Who wants to know? Who commissioned this poll? For what purpose? Who will have access to this extremely personal information? Would you give a stranger who knocked at the door this information? Get real!

If it were me they were asking, in spite of the fact that I do have a gun, I'd just say "NO." If I told them that it was none of their damn business, I'm sure that would be tabulated as a "not sure" answer (I mean, what idiot would not know whether or not they had a gun in their home?). Being frank and saying "Yeah, I have guns" quite simply would be honest but not very clear-thinking. And if I spoke only Spanish, it would be a distinct possibility that I might be an illegal and reluctant to admit that I had any sort of firearm. Adding up "yes" responses and "not sure" responses works out to 50 percent who constructively admit to having a gun at home, and if you figure that a whole bunch said "no" because they were uncomfortable with responding, you have a new ball game.

So this whole "poll" is completely suspect - I have no idea of the demographics chosen, who sponsored the poll, and why the hell anyone would believe the responses obtained from it. In short, this bit of "information" can only be completely bogus. Arizona IS a gun-owning and gun-supportive state, and no discrediting and skewed "polls" really matter. The truth was not served here, and any reliance on this one would be just plain dumb.

If I were the manager of a polling organization, I'd know these things, and giving out the results as fact would be beyond my sense of ethics. Behavior Research Center should hang its collective head in shame and admit what a fiasco this poll amounted to.

John

Maybe Behavior Research Center works for 'you know who'. I know when I lived in Tucson from 1983 to 1989, I did not work with or even know anyone that did NOT own multiple firearms. To say this poll is skewed, is too kind, but to label it correctly one might be shown the door.

In November, 2012, the voters of Louisiana approved an "Strict Scrutiny" amendment to the state constitution which codifies in the constitution the most stringent standards used by the current U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether regulations infringe on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment passed by 71.8% in a statewide election.

U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, (D) Louisiana voted "yea"
on the recent Senate vote on advancing the several current "gun control" measures to the floor for debate because she said: "The POLLS showed that 90% of the state gun owners were in favor of the additional laws.

Mary's philosophy is: "You gonna believe me, or your lying eyes"?

Mary may be looking for a job after the 2014 eelection.
teesur.

I'll be moving to Arizona soon, I know for a fact that there will be no operational firearms on my property...at least I think so?

I never tell pollsters anything! I believe that households get a reputation with pollsters and they will call you when they are looking for a specific type of answer (Just put the phone number on the pro or con list) and they call and call! I once told a street pollster that artillery made me deaf to pollsters. Ivan

I've been in AZ for almost 20 years and have only found a couple of people that don't have guns in the home and they were from states that "frown" on gun ownership.

I think like the OP, most people will tell a pollster no just to keep everyone from knowing.

Teesur, we have a similar problem in Indiana. Unfortunately, he is a freshman Senator who just got his job this year, so we will have six-long-years of his partyline tail-wagging before we have a chance to let him know what we think of him again.

Back to the OP, for the reasons John said, it seems unlikely to ever get an accurate poll on how people feel about anything to do with guns. There is just too much going on with the issue, and even if the truth were somehow uncovered the MSM could not be counted upon to deliver it without adding their preferred spin, which they have for every subject. Think Benghazi, for example.

No one called my house.

Many years ago I had the pleasure of having lunch with NC Senator Jesse Helms. During lunch he remarked to a bureaucrat at a nearby table who was spouting so called facts and figures:

"There are two kinds of statistics- Them you looks up and them you makes up"
Which are yours???
So of course the media does what they always do and makes them up to suit themselves.

Actually, you don't have to make up statistics to skew a poll. You simply ask your questions in the area that will give you the results you predetermine. For instance, if you want a liberal result for your poll, ask your questions in an area around a large university. You're going to tend to get a more leftist positive on your poll. As John mentioned, by including Spanish households you will likely get a moderate size group of illegals who are going to answer your questions with a lie or the "I don't know." This is easy to do in most states. In Florida, if you want one result, weigh you survey heavily with Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale residents. Want another result? Ask your questions in Lake City, Live Oak, McClenney, rural Jacksonville. You just determine what you want and then ask the questions in the right place. Just as an example, you could survey people all across the U.S. and get 90% want heavy gun control by surveying Hollywood, areas of Chicago, areas of Denver, South Florida and NYC. Wow, you've just surveyed the entire US for your figures.

CW

"Figures don't lie but liars figure."

Everyone I know who lives in AZ is a gun owner. Of couse that doesn't mean a whole lot because I think all my Colorado friends own guns, too. Not so sure about UT, but I'm guessing most have guns. What can I prove with that?

I have some liberal neighbors who probably don't own guns. Not sure what I make of that, either. Well, except they're not friends, just neighbors.

Maybe you could get a reasonably accurate count if you set up a drop box outside of a mall or shipping center with yes or no check box that clearly had no way to identify any of the answers back to an individual but this would still be skewed by the location you choose and by who agrees to answer and perhaps even by time of day etc.

Designing a study without bias when that is your goal is hard enough just imagine the results when you either don't recognize your own bias or deliberately inject bias into it.