Imagine getting an anonymous phone call. The caller asks you questions along the lines of “Do you keep expensive jewelry in the house?” or “How many sex toys do you own?” Would you give an honest answer?
How consider the question “Do you own guns?” or “How many guns do you own?”. Better yet, imagine a person living in California or New Jersey, states where the governments have been trying to eradicate legal gun ownership for decades. Would the answers be even remotely likely to be true?
That’s why anti-freedom organizations commission leading polls — to use invalid or misleading “data” to marginalize their opposition. In the minds of our enemies, being a congenital minority, such as left-handed or gay or female (even if the latter is an actual majority) is great — it’s a ready pool of self-identified victims they can pretend to represent. But minorities by choice — people who set up businesses, who home-school their kids, or who own inconvenient property like guns — are their enemies and subject to suppression by legal or illegal means.
When I lived in California I did receive asking if I owned guns. I have no idea what else they might have intended to ask, because I immediately hung up.
We can reasonably predict that in states with more second amendment rights violations, people will be less honest in polls about guns than in states with fewer second amendment violations.
When you ask, essentially, “Are you currently violating the law” or “Would you like to become more of a target of your government and leftist organizations by answering this question truthfully?” there will be little in the results to reflect the true numbers of gun owners.
Put the pressure on even more and eventually almost no one will admit to being a gun owner. Then the antis can claim that the low violent crime rates are due to the reduced numbers of gun owners.
Why take such a poll at all? Anyone could just as easily say they took a poll and make up all the answers themselves. Why should it matter one way or the other? We have the right to keep and bear arms no matter what, so what’s the game? The point of course is that it’s nothing but a game any way you look at it.
It’s not a nice game, either. What kind of person (other than someone working in marketing for a gun manufacturer or retailer) is concerned about who owns guns anyway? What kind of person sees it as any of their business? Progressives, that’s who. Authoritarians, communists, busy-bodies and the lesser criminals.
Gary Kleck made the same point when discussing his famous study of defensive gun use — those numbers are quite high and yet very likely to be significantly understated for that same reason.
It’s interesting that the map mentioned in the article shows a much lower number for NH than for MA, even though NH has a lot more respect for the right to bear arms than MA does. So reluctance to disclose gun ownership in uncivilized states is not the whole story. New Englanders are notoriously private, so it may be that NH has more real New Englanders left than MA does.
MA numbers may be from official records, while NH from polls (due to lack of registration).
That’s a good possibility. Similarly, NH doesn’t show up clearly in CC permit numbers, because NH by law does not make that information available to anyone.
“Have you ever shot or pulled a gun on anybody that you didn’t report to the police?”
You betcha – Like I’m going to answer that. Like talking to the police, it doesn’t matter what the question or the answer is.
To the police: “I don’t wish to answer any questions in the absence of legal counsel.”
To the nosey parasite on the phone: >CLICK<