Yesterday Pew Research published a new study entitled America's Complex Relationship With Guns.

Let me say up front that since this is a 'pol' I take all of it with a grain of salt. Pew Research is generally centered on topics, but anything's possible given the current state of affairs.

Assuming it's fairly accurate, I find some of the positions that 40%+ of gun owners agree on nationally to be concerning. Like banning 'high capacity' magazines, banning 'assault style' rifles, and (get this) creating a federal database to track gun sales. If these opinions are nationally based, no wonder we don't get any help from the 'million gun owners' in NJ. The opinions on balance in this state have to be at the worst end of the scales.

The report is very long but there's a lot of interesting items in it. Take it for what you think it's worth.

Garbage in-garbage out. I also take it with a grain of salt. I for one would never respond to a pollster asking if I owned a gun but that's just me living in NJ.

Quote

The nationally representative survey of 3,930 U.S. adults, including 1,269 gun owners, was conducted March 13 to 27 and April 4 to 18, 2017, using the Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel

I call bullshit on the 'results' of this survey.

With 330 million Americans, I don't believe the crap about representative sampling and statistical probabilities that the numbers people feed us all the time. So much for Pew-Pew research.

I think the focus is all in the wrong place, trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.  There are other things that kill many more people and that's where effort should be focused.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

• Heart disease: 614,348
• Cancer: 591,699
• Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 147,101
• Accidents (unintentional injuries): 136,053
• Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 133,103
• Alzheimer's disease: 93,541
• Diabetes: 76,488
• Influenza and Pneumonia: 55,227
• Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis: 48,146
• Intentional self-harm (suicide): 42,773

Firearms isn't even in the top 10.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/injury.htm

All firearm deaths

• Number of deaths: 33,599
• Deaths per 100,000 population: 10.5

Almost 20 times as many deaths occur from heart disease.  The flu and pneumonia kill more people.  As we know that 34k number includes suicides and good guys shooting bad guys.  We've seen the breakdown of the numbers ... 25% of all gun crime happens in just 4 cities, etc.

... and we didn't even touch on the harm that tobacco and alcohol inflict.

America will never understand that gun control is a myth until they begin to understand these numbers, and it's too much of an emotional issue.  The Pro 2A movement I think would be better served by focusing on publicizing and educating on the real scale of the "gun control problem".

The biggest problem with polls of gun owners is that so many gun owners won't answer a strangers questions about their guns or their position on guns.  There is no way to get accurate data.

20 hours ago, tomk62 said:

America will never understand that gun control is a myth until they begin to understand these numbers, and it's too much of an emotional issue.  The Pro 2A movement I think would be better served by focusing on publicizing and educating on the real scale of the "gun control problem".

I don't believe the "numbers" make a difference to those antis attempting to engineer a "cause & effect" in re: guns.  They want to demonstrate to the world (and especially the sheeples) that "guns are bad." They'll figure out how to work around the numbers if they don't support their argument.

I absolutely agree that we need to focus on "publicizing and educating."  The more incidents we publicize of where non-LEO GGWG's have saved a life (and where the lack of a GGWG has cost a life), will be the best thing we can do... (that is, if we can get the sheeples away from the MSM ).   The other thing we can do is take more people to the range and show them the right way to approach firearms and firearm ownership. Hopefully, the more we get over to our side, the less impact the anti-spin will have.