Journal on Firearms and Public Policy Volume 6 The Journal on Firearms and Public Policy is the official publication of the Center for the Study of Firearms and Public Policy of the Second Amendment Foundation. Editor Associate Editors David B. Kopel Jody Rozonsky Independence Institute Second Amendment Foundation Publisher Paul Williams Julianne Versnel Gottlieb Citizens Committee for the Right Women & Guns Magazine to Keep and Bear Arms Fellows of the Center David Bordua, Ph.D. Gary Kleck, Ph.D. David I. Caplan, Ph.D., J.D. Edward F. Leddy, Ph.D. Brendan Furnish, Ph.D. Joseph P. Tartaro Alan M. Gottlieb William Tonso, Ph.D. Don B. Kates, Jr., J.D. James K. Whisker, Ph.D. JOURNAL POLICY The Second Amendment Foundation sponsors this journal to encourage objective research. The Foundation invites submission of research papers of scholarly quality from a variety of disciplines, regardless of whether their conclusions support the Foundation's positions on controversial issues. Manuscripts should be sent in duplicate to: Center for the Study on Firearms and Public Policy, a division of the Second Amendment Foundation, 12500 N.E. Tenth Place, Bellevue, Washington 98005. Authors using computers should, if possible, submit on diskette in Microsoft Word for Windows c format. Journal on Firearms and Public Policy CONTENTS A nation of cowards Stephen P. Snyder page 7 "Sorry Wrong Number": Why Media Polls on Gun Control Are So Often Unreliable Gary A. Mauser and David Kopel page 23 The "Sporting Purpose" Issue in Gun-Control Policy Preston K. Covey page 54 The Right of the People or the Power of the State: Bearing Arms, Arming Militias, and the Second Amendment Stephen P. Halbrook page 69 The Tragedy at Waco Paul H. Blackman page 164 This publication is copyrighted © 1994 by the Second Amendment Foundation. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The Second Amendment Foundation is a non-profit educational foundation dedicated to promoting a better understanding of our Constitutional heritage to privately own and possess firearms. For more information about Foundation activities, write to: Second Amendment Foundation, James Madison Building; 12500 N.E. Tenth Place; Bellevue, Washington 98005. Telephone number is (206)454-7012. Additional copies of this publication may be ordered at $10.00 each. This publication is distributed to academia and the book trade by Merril Press, P.O. Box 1682, Bellevue, Washington 98009. Electronic Edition Published and Distributed with permission of the Second Amendment Foundation By Lektra Press PO Box 1120, Merrimack, NH 03054-1120 info@lektra.com R. Craig Peterson, Publisher (603) 672-8333 in co-operation with Mainstream Electronic Information Services. A Nation of Cowards Jeffrey R. Snyder Perhaps the most forcefully-argued article regarding the moral case for use of armed force in defense of self and others, "A Nation of Cowards" has played an important role in shifting the terms of the gun control debate. The article, which has been quoted by national columnists including George Will and Samuel Francis, vigorously advances the proposition that laws which disarm law-abiding persons are not merely ineffective, or in conflict with the Constitution. Such laws, Mr. Snyder argues, are profoundly immoral. "A Nation of Cowards" is reprinted from: The Public Interest, No. 113 (Fall 1993), pp. 40-55. c by National Affairs, Inc. Jeffrey Snyder is an attorney in Fairfax, Virginia. Our society has reached a pinnacle of self-expression and respect for individuality rare or unmatched in history. Our entire popular culture_from fashion magazines to the cinema_positively screams the matchless worth of the individual, and glories in eccentricity, nonconformity, independent judgment, and self-determination. This enthusiasm is reflected in the prevalent notion that helping someone entails increasing that person's "self-esteem"; that if a person properly values himself, he will naturally be a happy, productive, and, in some inexplicable fashion, responsible member of society. And yet, while people are encouraged to revel in their individuality and incalculable self-worth, the media and the law enforcement establishment continually advise us that, when confronted with the threat of lethal violence, we should not resist, but simply give the attacker what he wants. If the crime under consideration is rape, there is some notable waffling on this point, and the discussion quickly moves to how the woman can change her behavior to minimize the risk of rape, and the various ridiculous, non-lethal weapons she may acceptably carry, such as whistles, keys, mace or, that weapon which really sends shivers down a rapist's spine, the portable cellular phone. Now how can this be? How can a person who values himself so highly calmly accept the indignity of a criminal assault? How can one who believes that the essence of his dignity lies in his self-determination passively accept the forcible deprivation of that self-determination? How can he, quietly, with great dignity and poise, simply hand over the goods? The assumption, of course, is that there is no inconsistency. The advice not to resist a criminal assault and simply hand over the goods is founded on the notion that one's life is of incalculable value, and that no amount of property is worth it. Put aside, for a moment, the outrageousness of the suggestion that a criminal who proffers lethal violence should be treated as if he has instituted a new social contract: "I will not hurt or kill you if you give me what I want." For years, feminists have labored to educate people that rape is not about sex, but about domination, degradation, and control. Evidently, someone needs to inform the law enforcement establishment and the media that kidnapping, robbery, carjacking, and assault are not about property. Crime is not only a complete disavowal of the social contract, but also a commandeering of the victim's person and liberty. If the individual's dignity lies in the fact that he is a moral agent engaging in actions of his own will, in free exchange with others, then crime always violates the victim's dignity. It is, in fact, an act of enslavement. Your wallet, your purse, or your car may not be worth your life, but your dignity is; and if it is not worth fighting for, it can hardly be said to exist. The gift of life Although difficult for modern man to fathom, it was once widely believed that life was a gift from God, that to not defend that life when offered violence was to hold God's gift in contempt, to be a coward and to breach one's duty to one's community. A sermon given in Philadelphia in 1747 unequivocally equated the failure to defend oneself with suicide: "He that suffers his life to be taken from him by one that hath no authority for that purpose, when he might preserve it by defense, incurs the Guilt of self murder since God hath enjoined him to seek the continuance of his life, and Nature itself teaches every creature to defend itself." "Cowardice" and "self-respect" have largely disappeared from public discourse. In their place we are offered "self-esteem" as the bellwether of success and a proxy for dignity. "Self-respect" implies that one recognizes standards, and judges oneself worthy by the degree to which one lives up to them. "Self-esteem" simply means that one feels good about oneself. "Dignity" used to refer to the self-mastery and fortitude with which a person conducted himself in the face of life's vicissitudes and the boorish behavior of others. Now, judging by campus speech codes, dignity requires that we never encounter a discouraging word and that others be coerced into acting respectfully, evidently on the assumption that we are powerless to prevent our degradation if exposed to the demeaning behavior of others. These are signposts proclaiming the insubstantiality of our character, the hollowness of our souls. It is impossible to address the problem of rampant crime without talking about the moral responsibility of the intended victim. Crime is rampant because the law-abiding, each of us, condone it, excuse it, permit it, submit to it. We permit and encourage it because we do not fight back, immediately, then and there, where it happens. Crime is not rampant because we do not have enough prisons, because judges and prosecutors are too soft, because the police are hamstrung with absurd technicalities. The defect is there, in our character. We are a nation of cowards and shirkers. Do you feel lucky? In 1991, when then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh released the FBI's annual crime statistics, he noted that it is now more likely that a person will be the victim of a violent crime than that he will be in an auto accident. Despite this, most people readily believe that the existence of the police relieves them of the responsibility to take full measures to protect themselves. The police, however, are not personal bodyguards. Rather, they act as a general deterrent to crime, both by their presence and by apprehending criminals after the fact. As numerous courts have held, they have no legal obligation to protect anyone in particular. You cannot sue them for failing to prevent you from being the victim of a crime. Insofar as the police deter by their presence, they are very, very good. Criminals take great pains not to commit a crime in front of them. Unfortunately, the corollary is that you can pretty much bet your life (and you are) that they won't be there at the moment you actually need them. Should you ever be the victim of an assault, a robbery, or a rape, you will find it very difficult to call the police while the act is in progress, even if you are carrying a portable cellular phone. Nevertheless, you might be interested to know how long it takes them to show up. Department of Justice statistics for 1991 show that, for all crimes of violence, only 28 percent of calls are responded to within five minutes. The idea that protection is a service people can call to have delivered and expect to receive in a timely fashion is often mocked by gun owners, who love to recite the challenge, "Call for a cop, call for an ambulance, and call for a pizza. See who shows up first." Many people deal with the problem of crime by convincing themselves that they live, work, and travel only in special "crime-free" zones. Invariably, they react with shock and hurt surprise when they discover that criminals do not play by the rules and do not respect these imaginary boundaries. If, however, you understand that crime can occur anywhere at anytime, and if you understand that you can be maimed or mortally wounded in mere seconds, you may wish to consider whether you are willing to place the responsibility for safeguarding your life in the hands of others. Power and responsibility Is your life worth protecting? If so, whose responsibility is it to protect it? If you believe that it is the police's, not only are you wrong_since the courts universally rule that they have no legal obligation to do so_but you face some difficult moral quandaries. How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself? Because that is his job and we pay him to do it? Because your life is of incalculable value, but his is only worth the $30,000 salary we pay him? If you believe it reprehensible to possess the means and will to use lethal force to repel a criminal assault, how can you call upon another to do so for you? Do you believe that you are forbidden to protect yourself because the police are better qualified to protect you, because they know what they are doing but you're a rank amateur? Put aside that this is equivalent to believing that only concert pianists may play the piano and only professional athletes may play sports. What exactly are these special qualities possessed only by the police and beyond the rest of us mere mortals? One who values his life and takes seriously his responsibilities to his family and community will possess and cultivate the means of fighting back, and will retaliate when threatened with death or grievous injury to himself or a loved one. He will never be content to rely solely on others for his safety, or to think he has done all that is possible by being aware of his surroundings and taking measures of avoidance. Let's not mince words: He will be armed, will be trained in the use of his weapon, and will defend himself when faced with lethal violence. Fortunately, there is a weapon for preserving life and liberty that can be wielded effectively by almost anyone_the handgun. Small and light enough to be carried habitually, lethal, but unlike the knife or sword, not demanding great skill or strength, it truly is the "great equalizer." Requiring only hand-eye coordination and a modicum of ability to remain cool under pressure, it can be used effectively by the old and the weak against the young and the strong, by the one against the many. The handgun is the only weapon that would give a lone female jogger a chance of prevailing against a gang of thugs intent on rape, a teacher a chance of protecting children at recess from a madman intent on massacring them, a family of tourists waiting at a mid-town subway station the means to protect themselves from a gang of teens armed with razors and knives. But since we live in a society that by and large outlaws the carrying of arms, we are brought into the fray of the Great American Gun War. Gun control is one of the most prominent battlegrounds in our current culture wars. Yet it is unique in the half-heartedness with which our conservative leaders and pundits_our "conservative elite"_do battle, and have conceded the moral high ground to liberal gun control proponents. It is not a topic often written about, or written about with any great fervor, by William F. Buckley or Patrick Buchanan. As drug czar, William Bennett advised President Bush to ban "assault weapons." George Will is on record as recommending the repeal of the Second Amendment, and Jack Kemp is on record as favoring a ban on the possession of semiautomatic "assault weapons." The battle for gun rights is one fought predominantly by the common man. The beliefs of both our liberal and conservative elites are in fact abetting the criminal rampage through our society. Selling crime prevention By any rational measure, nearly all gun control proposals are hokum. The Brady Bill, for example, would not have prevented John Hinckley from obtaining a gun to shoot President Reagan; Hinckley purchased his weapon five months before the attack, and his medical records could not have served as a basis to deny his purchase of a gun, since medical records are not public documents filed with the police. Similarly, California's waiting period and background check did not stop Patrick Purdy from purchasing the "assault rifle" and handguns he used to massacre children during recess in a Stockton schoolyard; the felony conviction that would have provided the basis for stopping the sales did not exist, because Mr. Purdy's previous weapons violations were plea-bargained down from felonies to misdemeanors. In the mid-sixties there was a public service advertising campaign targeted at car owners about the prevention of car theft. The purpose of the ad was to urge car owners not to leave their keys in their cars. The message was, "Don't help a good boy go bad." The implication was that, by leaving his keys in his car, the normal, law-abiding car owner was contributing to the delinquency of minors who, if they just weren't tempted beyond their limits, would be "good." Now, in those days people still had a fair sense of just who was responsible for whose behavior. The ad succeeded in enraging a goodly portion of the populace, and was soon dropped. Nearly all of the gun control measures offered by Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) and its ilk embody the same philosophy. They are founded on the belief that America's law-abiding gun owners are the source of the problem. With their unholy desire for firearms, they are creating a society awash in a sea of guns, thereby helping good boys go bad, and helping bad boys be badder. This laying of moral blame for violent crime at the feet of the law-abiding, and the implicit absolution of violent criminals for their misdeeds, naturally infuriates honest gun owners. The files of HCI and other gun control organizations are filled with proposals to limit the availability of semiautomatic and other firearms to law-abiding citizens, and barren of proposals for apprehending and punishing violent criminals. It is ludicrous to expect that the proposals of HCI, or any gun control laws, will significantly curb crime. According to Department of Justice and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) statistics, fully 90 percent of violent crimes are committed without a handgun, and 93 percent of the guns obtained by violent criminals are not obtained through the lawful purchase and sale transactions that are the object of most gun control legislation. Furthermore, the number of violent criminals is minute in comparison to the number of firearms in America_estimated by the ATF at about 200 million, approximately one-third of which are handguns. With so abundant a supply, there will always be enough guns available for those who wish to use them for nefarious ends, no matter how complete the legal prohibitions against them, or how draconian the punishment for their acquisition or use. No, the gun control proposals of HCI and other organizations are not seriously intended as crime control. Something else is at work here. The tyranny of the elite Gun control is a moral crusade against a benighted, barbaric citizenry. This is demonstrated not only by the ineffectualness of gun control in preventing crime, and by the fact that it focuses on restricting the behavior of the law-abiding rather than apprehending and punishing the guilty, but also by the execration that gun control proponents heap on gun owners and their evil instrumentality, the NRA. Gun owners are routinely portrayed as uneducated, paranoid rednecks fascinated by and prone to violence, i.e., exactly the type of person who opposes the liberal agenda and whose moral and social "re-education" is the object of liberal social policies. Typical of such bigotry is New York Gov. Mario Cuomo's famous characterization of gun-owners as "hunters who drink beer, don't vote, and lie to their wives about where they were all weekend." Similar vituperation is rained upon the NRA, characterized by Sen. Edward Kennedy as the "pusher's best friend," lampooned in political cartoons as standing for the right of children to carry firearms to school and, in general, portrayed as standing for an individual's God-given right to blow people away at will. The stereotype is, of course, false. As criminologist and constitutional lawyer Don B. Kates, Jr. and former HCI contributor Dr. Patricia Harris have pointed out, "[s]tudies consistently show that, on the average, gun owners are better educated and have more prestigious jobs than non-owners.... Later studies show that gun owners are less likely than non-owners to approve of police brutality, violence against dissenters, etc." Conservatives must understand that the antipathy many liberals have for gun owners arises in good measure from their statist utopianism. This habit of mind has nowhere been better explored than in The Republic. There, Plato argues that the perfectly just society is one in which an unarmed people exhibit virtue by minding their own business in the performance of their assigned functions, while the government of philosopher-kings, above the law and protected by armed guardians unquestioning in their loyalty to the state, engineers, implements, and fine-tunes the creation of that society, aided and abetted by myths that both hide and justify their totalitarian manipulation. The unarmed life When columnist Carl Rowan preaches gun control and uses a gun to defend his home, when Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer seeks legislation year after year to ban semiautomatic "assault weapons" whose only purpose, we are told, is to kill people, while he is at the same time escorted by state police armed with large-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pistols, it is not simple hypocrisy. It is the workings of that habit of mind possessed by all superior beings who have taken upon themselves the terrible burden of civilizing the masses and who understand, like our Congress, that laws are for other people. The liberal elite know that they are philosopher-kings. They know that the people simply cannot be trusted; that they are incapable of just and fair self-government; that left to their own devices, their society will be racist, sexist, homophobic, and inequitable_and the liberal elite know how to fix things. They are going to help us live the good and just life, even if they have to lie to us and force us to do it. And they detest those who stand in their way. The private ownership of firearms is a rebuke to this utopian zeal. To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state's totalitarian reach. The Florida experience The elitist distrust of the people underlying the gun control movement is illustrated beautifully in HCI's campaign against a new concealed-carry law in Florida. Prior to 1987, the Florida law permitting the issuance of concealed-carry permits was administered at the county level. The law was vague, and, as a result, was subject to conflicting interpretation and political manipulation. Permits were issued principally to security personnel and the privileged few with political connections. Permits were valid only within the county of issuance. In 1987, however, Florida enacted a uniform concealed-carry law which mandates that county authorities issue a permit to anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria. The law requires that a permit be issued to any applicant who is a resident, at least twenty-one years of age, has no criminal record, no record of alcohol or drug abuse, no history of mental illness, and provides evidence of having satisfactorily completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA or other competent instructor. The applicant must provide a set of fingerprints, after which the authorities make a background check. The permit must be issued or denied within ninety days, is valid throughout the state, and must be renewed every three years, which provides authorities a regular means of reevaluating whether the permit holder still qualifies. Passage of this legislation was vehemently opposed by HCI and the media. The law, they said, would lead to citizens shooting each other over everyday disputes involving fender benders, impolite behavior, and other slights to their dignity. Terms like "Florida, the Gunshine State" and "Dodge City East" were coined to suggest that the state, and those seeking passage of the law, were encouraging individuals to act as judge, jury, and executioner in a "Death Wish" society. No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates the elitist beliefs underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership. Given the qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can only believe that common, law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets. They are so mentally and morally deficient that they would mistake a permit to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will. Did the dire predictions come true? Despite the fact that Miami and Dade County have severe problems with the drug trade, the homicide rate fell in Florida following enactment of this law, as it did in Oregon following enactment of similar legislation there. There are, in addition, several documented cases of new permit holders successfully using their weapons to defend themselves. Information from the Florida Department of State shows that, from the beginning of the program in 1987 through June 1993, 160,823 permits have been issued, and only 530, or about 0.33 percent of the applicants, have been denied a permit for failure to satisfy the criteria, indicating that the law is benefiting those whom it was intended to benefit_the law-abiding. Only 16 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent, have been revoked due to the post-issuance commission of a crime involving a firearm. The Florida legislation has been used as a model for legislation adopted by Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Mississippi. There are, in addition, seven other states (Maine, North and South Dakota, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and, with the exception of cities with a population in excess of 1 million, Pennsylvania) which provide that concealed-carry permits must be issued to law-abiding citizens who satisfy various objective criteria. Finally, no permit is required at all in Vermont. Altogether, then, there are thirteen states in which law-abiding citizens who wish to carry arms to defend themselves may do so. While no one appears to have compiled the statistics from all of these jurisdictions, there is certainly an ample data base for those seeking the truth about the trustworthiness of law-abiding citizens who carry firearms. Other evidence also suggests that armed citizens are very responsible in using guns to defend themselves. Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their assailants. In defending themselves with their firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the police. A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The "error rate" for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high. It is simply not possible to square the numbers above and the experience of Florida with the notions that honest, law-abiding gun owners are borderline psychopaths itching for an excuse to shoot someone, vigilantes eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless, or incompetent fools incapable of determining when it is proper to use lethal force in defense of their lives. Nor upon reflection should these results seem surprising. Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring special powers of observation and great book-learning to discern. When a man pulls a knife on a woman and says, "You're coming with me," her judgment that a crime is being committed is not likely to be in error. There is little chance that she is going to shoot the wrong person. It is the police, because they are rarely at the scene of the crime when it occurs, who are more likely to find themselves in circumstances where guilt and innocence are not so clear-cut, and in which the probability for mistakes is higher. Arms and liberty Classical republican philosophy has long recognized the critical relationship between personal liberty and the possession of arms by a people ready and willing to use them. Political theorists as dissimilar as Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all shared the view that the possession of arms is vital for resisting tyranny, and that to be disarmed by one's government is tantamount to being enslaved by it. The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed. As Kates has shown, the Second Amendment is as much a product of this political philosophy as it is of the American experience in the Revolutionary War. Yet our conservative elite has abandoned this aspect of republican theory. Although our conservative pundits recognize and embrace gun owners as allies in other arenas, their battle for gun rights is desultory. The problem here is not a statist utopianism, although goodness knows that liberals are not alone in the confidence they have in the state's ability to solve society's problems. Rather, the problem seems to lie in certain cultural traits shared by our conservative and liberal elites. One such trait is an abounding faith in the power of the word. The failure of our conservative elite to defend the Second Amendment stems in great measure from an overestimation of the power of the rights set forth in the First Amendment, and a general undervaluation of action. Implicit in calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment is the assumption that our First Amendment rights are sufficient to preserve our liberty. The belief is that liberty can be preserved as long as men freely speak their minds; that there is no tyranny or abuse that can survive being exposed in the press; and that the truth need only be disclosed for the culprits to be shamed. The people will act, and the truth shall set us, and keep us, free. History is not kind to this belief, tending rather to support the view of Hobbes, Machiavelli, and other republican theorists that only people willing and able to defend themselves can preserve their liberties. While it may be tempting and comforting to believe that the existence of mass electronic communication has forever altered the balance of power between the state and its subjects, the belief has certainly not been tested by time, and what little history there is in the age of mass communication is not especially encouraging. The camera, radio, and press are mere tools and, like guns, can be used for good or ill. Hitler, after all, was a masterful orator, used radio to very good effect, and is well known to have pioneered and exploited the propaganda opportunities afforded by film. And then, of course, there were the Brownshirts, who knew very well how to quell dissent among intellectuals. Polite society In addition to being enamored of the power of words, our conservative elite shares with liberals the notion that an armed society is just not civilized or progressive, that massive gun ownership is a blot on our civilization. This association of personal disarmament with civilized behavior is one of the great unexamined beliefs of our time. Should you read English literature from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, you will discover numerous references to the fact that a gentleman, especially when out at night or traveling, armed himself with a sword or a pistol against the chance of encountering a highwayman or other such predator. This does not appear to have shocked the ladies accompanying him. True, for the most part there were no police in those days, but we have already addressed the notion that the presence of the police absolves people of the responsibility to look after their safety, and in any event the existence of the police cannot be said to have reduced crime to negligible levels. It is by no means obvious why it is "civilized" to permit oneself to fall easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil ways. While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is "civilized," a society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding_because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers, and murderers_certainly cannot claim this distinction. Perhaps the notion that defending oneself with lethal force is not "civilized" arises from the view that violence is always wrong, or the view that each human being is of such intrinsic worth that it is wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances. The necessary implication of these propositions, however, is that life is not worth defending. Far from being "civilized," the beliefs that counterviolence and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread of barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not respect the lives and property of others will rule over those who do. In truth, one who believes it wrong to arm himself against criminal violence shows contempt of God's gift of life (or, in modern parlance, does not properly value himself), does not live up to his responsibilities to his family and community, and proclaims himself mentally and morally deficient, because he does not trust himself to behave responsibly. In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly. While gun control proponents and other advocates of a kinder, gentler society incessantly decry our "armed society," in truth we do not live in an armed society. We live in a society in which violent criminals and agents of the state habitually carry weapons, and in which many law-abiding citizens own firearms but do not go about armed. Department of Justice statistics indicate that 87 percent of all violent crimes occur outside the home. Essentially, although tens of millions own firearms, we are an unarmed society. Take back the night Clearly the police and the courts are not providing a significant brake on criminal activity. While liberals call for more poverty, education, and drug treatment programs, conservatives take a more direct tack. George Will advocates a massive increase in the number of police and a shift toward "community-based policing." Meanwhile, the NRA and many conservative leaders call for laws that would require violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and would place repeat offenders permanently behind bars. Our society suffers greatly from the beliefs that only official action is legitimate and that the state is the source of our earthly salvation. Both liberal and conservative prescriptions for violent crime suffer from the "not in my job description" school of thought regarding the responsibilities of the law-abiding citizen, and from an overestimation of the ability of the state to provide society's moral moorings. As long as law-abiding citizens assume no personal responsibility for combating crime, liberal and conservative programs will fail to contain it. Judging by the numerous articles about concealed-carry in gun magazines, the growing number of products advertised for such purpose, and the increase in the number of concealed-carry applications in states with mandatory-issuance laws, more and more people, including growing numbers of women, are carrying firearms for self-defense. Since there are still many states in which the issuance of permits is discretionary and in which law enforcement officials routinely deny applications, many people have been put to the hard choice between protecting their lives or respecting the law. Some of these people have learned the hard way, by being the victim of a crime, or by seeing a friend or loved one raped, robbed, or murdered, that violent crime can happen to anyone, anywhere at anytime, and that crime is not about sex or property but life, liberty, and dignity. The laws proscribing concealed-carry of firearms by honest, law-abiding citizens breed nothing but disrespect for the law. As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. A federal law along the lines of the Florida statute_overriding all contradictory state and local laws and acknowledging that the carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens is a privilege and immunity of citizenship_is needed to correct the outrageous conduct of state and local officials operating under discretionary licensing systems. What we certainly do not need is more gun control. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people. At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." The repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern. This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning that America's gun owners will not go gently into that good, utopian night: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." While liberals take this statement as evidence of the retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun owners hope that liberals hold equally strong sentiments about their printing presses, word processors, and television cameras. The republic depends upon fervent devotion to all our fundamental rights. Sorry, Wrong Number Why Media Polls on Gun Control are so Often Unreliable Gary A. Mauser and David B. Kopel How scientific are the polls reported in the media on the gun control issue? Without arguing for or against gun controls, this article examines the interviewing and sampling methods used by media polls and finds that some polls claiming impressive majorities in favor of severe gun controls may not be accurate. A longer version of this article was originally published in Political Communication and Persuasion, vol. 9, pp. 69-92 (1992). Gary Mauser is a Professor of Business Administration at Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby, British Columbia. David B. Kopel is Research Director of the Independence Institute in Golden, Colorado. I. INTRODUCTION THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES THE QUALITY OF THE SURVEYS USED BY THE MEDIA TO INVESTIGATE THE CONTROVERSIAL PUBLIC POLICY ISSUE OF GUN CONTROL. THE CENTRAL QUESTION IS THE SCIENTIFIC QUALITY OF THE METHODS USED BY MEDIA IN THEIR USE OF PUBLIC OPINION POLLS. AFTER DISCUSSING THE METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS IN THE MEDIA POLLS, THIS ARTICLE PER SUGGESTS THAT MANY MEDIA POLLS ARE METHODOLOGICALLY FLAWED AND UNRELIABLE. IN SOME CASES, THE POLLS ARE SO FLAWED TO SUGGEST THAT THE POLLS ARE NOT SCIENCE BUT "SAGECRAFT," WHICH TONSO DEFINES AS A QUASI-SCIENTIFIC DATA MANUFACTURED TO BOLSTER A PREDETERMINED IDEOLOGICAL POSITION.1 The questions of whether gun control is itself a good public policy, or whether opinion polls form a sound basis for public policy are not addressed. The focus is only on the reliability of polling about the gun issue. This paper deals only with "media polls"_that is, polls which are produced either by or for the media, and intended mainly to run as news stories. Examples of "media polls" include the polls commissioned by Time magazine, CNN, major urban newspapers, and other major media organizations. "Media polls" also refers to polls conducted by the Gallup and Harris organizations, because many Gallup and Harris polls are marketed for newspaper syndication, and since the Gallup and Harris polls suffer from many of the same methodological flaws as do the polls conducted by the media. This paper does not deal with in-depth analytical surveys conducted by reputable survey research organizations_academic or professional. In contrast to the "media polls," the analytical polls use lengthy question series to fully assess the public's complex attitudes on sensitive issues such as gun control. The analytical polls are typically commissioned by a customer with a strong interest in the gun policy debate and typically with a strong interest in obtaining quality results. Polls which will be used to formulate political strategy have strong reasons to be methodologically solid. Analytical polls may be paid for by anti-gun organizations, such as the Center for the Study and Prevention of Handgun Violence, or by pro-gun organizations, such as the National Rifle Association. Although it might be expected that the agendas of the customers would bias the polls, the analytical polls conducted for both sides of the gun debate appear to be reliable. Analytical polls paid for by anti-gun organizations achieve results remarkably similar to polls paid for by pro-gun organizations.2 The similarity suggests that there is a real "public opinion" about the gun control issue, and that scientifically conducted polls can measure that opinion with reasonable accuracy. Media polls, on the other hand, often report "findings" that are incorrect. In 1976 in Massachusetts and 1982 in California, handgun prohibition referenda questions were on the ballot. Media polls conducted before the election reported a tight race, but the prohibition measures were defeated in large landslides. (In Massachusetts, 69.2% voted against prohibition, as did 63% in California).3 One of the better-known media polls which was clearly in error was Time magazine's survey of American gun owners. That survey claimed that four million Americans possessed fully automatic machine guns, a number that is approximately 10 times higher than the number estimated by any criminologist, and 20 times higher than the number of legally registered machine guns.4 This article attempts to identify and explore some of the methodological flaws that may lead to errors in the media polls. While other researchers have criticized the ideological bias of media polls, this paper attempts to evaluate the impact of the methodological flaws upon newspaper poll results.5 Public attitudes are complex, particularly with respect to contentious issues such as gun control, abortion, or capital punishment. It would not be surprising if the public were to hold complex or even contradictory views on controversial issues such as gun control. Not only are many people still thinking through their feelings on many controversial issues, but such issues inherently involve competing values, so that people are required to make difficult trade-offs between two or more highly desirable values before they can comfortably support one side or another in the debate. Very little of this complexity is found in media reported polls. If issues are complex, then subtle differences in question wording could yield quite different results. Unfortunately, many subtleties are not recognized by the researcher until after the fact. Conscientious researchers deal with this problem by probing the issue area with a variety of questions. In contrast, questions in media polls are often highly selective and occasionally quite biased. Questions about firearms touch sensitive issues and need to be approached with the highest standards of sampling and interviewing quality. Too often this is not the case. Typically, due to cost constraints perhaps, the media use methods that at best skirt the border of minimally acceptable standards.6 Such an approach may be penny-wise, but it risks introducing biases, which can be particularly severe in dealing with sensitive issues such as gun control. Moreover, the interviewer effect is, this paper suggests, a greater problem in media polls on gun control than has been previous recognized. While interviewer effects have been known to exist for other public policy issues, the importance of such differences for researching gun control is less well known. Interviewer bias is a potential problem whenever there are significant social or cultural differences between the interviewer and respondent. The classic problem is race, but examples have been found for sex, social class, and age differences.7 The social and cultural differences between interviewers and respondents are fertile ground for potential distortion. This article identifies these problems and empirically analyzes the interviewer effects in a survey conducted recently in the United States and Canada. II. Accuracy and Reported Accuracy of Polls A. Sampling Error The scientific accuracy of polls is typically exaggerated by the media. Almost all media reports of polls include a one-sentence paragraph explaining that "the survey is considered accurate within 2.5 [or 3 or 5] percentage points," and giving the sample size.8 This standard caveat refers to sampling error, that is, the statistical error introduced theoretically by using a sample rather than a complete census of the target population. The "explanation" gives the erroneous impression that the stated error is the maximum error contained in the poll, when in reality it is the minimum. This explanation assumes that no errors or biases that exist in either the sampling or interviewing methods. Such perfection is highly unlikely even in the best of surveys. This paper argues below that scientific flaws in the media polls introduce additional error at least as large as, and sometimes many times larger than, the sampling error.9 In addition, the stated error refers only to the sample population as a whole, and not to subgroups within the sample population. In many cases, the results from the subgroups are considered more important that the result from the national sample. For example, in polling about "waiting periods" for handgun purchasers, the fact that most Americans support a waiting period may be less newsworthy than the fact that most handgun owners support a waiting period. But the results for handgun owners are far less reliable than the results for the nation as a whole, since the handgun-owning sample is so much smaller.10 The media claim that they are required to give only the briefest treatment of methodological questions because of the low level of expertise of the audience or the reporter. This argument is not very convincing. Such over-simplification, at the very least, acts to enhance the readers' perceived quality of the survey and, arguably, may even augment the impact of the poll because it exaggerates the "scientific" nature of the poll. But keeping the methodology secret can have much more serious consequences, such as enabling cost-conscious media managers to cut corners in quality that could jeopardize the accuracy of the results. Particularly in magazines_where gun control articles often run for thousands of words_it would not be difficult for articles discussing media polls to include a paragraph noting that the stated sampling error is valid only for the population as a whole, and not for any subsets. Nor would it be difficult to note that inaccuracies may exist in addition to the sampling error. B. Additional Errors If sampling error were the only error_as the media pollsters imply_then media polls on the same subject at the same time would rarely report results further apart than the sum of the sampling error of the two polls. In fact, simultaneous or near-simultaneous media polls on the same subject often yield results farther apart than the sum of the sampling error in each poll. For example, in early 1991, a CNN poll found 45% opposed to using nuclear weapons against Iraq. Yet a Gallup poll found 71% in favor of using the weapons.11 That media polls contain errors far larger than the statistical error also became apparent during the 1984 race for the Democratic Presidential nomination. National polls for organizations were conducted within days of each other, and often simultaneously. The polling results showed differences far larger than the statistical error. One poll might report Hart ahead nationally by 8 points, while another poll, taken at the same time, might show Mondale ahead by 5 points. And of course clear examples of errors larger than the sampling error were seen in the polls of the 1976 Massachusetts and 1982 California handgun ban referenda, where pollsters predicted a close election, but the prohibition referenda were defeated in landslides. Survey researchers call any error other than sampling error "non-sampling errors." Three of the most important types of non-sampling errors are: coverage error, non-response error, and measurement error. "Coverage error" means failing to give any chance of being selected in the survey to some persons in the "target" population; "non-response error" arises from failing to collect data on all persons in the sample; and "measurement error" is any problem with getting the "true answer" from a respondent. The first potential for bias that will be discussed is that of problems with question wording, which is one of the most important sources of measurement error. III. Questions Small changes in wording can create large changes in results. In the polls regarding use of nuclear weapons against Iraq (discussed above) CNN simply asked whether such weapons should be used, whereas Gallup asked about "tactical" nuclear weapons, and hypothesized that such use could save American lives. While CNN had found Americans closely divided on the nuclear weapons issue, Gallup reported a large majority of 71% in favor of use of such weapons. This section examines the questions that are often used in gun control polling, and argues that a variety of flaws in the questions exaggerates public support for severe gun laws. Gallup's question about nuclear weapons use was what this paper calls an "argumentative question"_a question that presents explicit or implicit facts or arguments in favor of one of the results the respondent is evaluating. By modifying the wording of a question, "You can come up with any result you want," says Peter Hart, pollster for the Dukakis campaign. An example of an argumentative gun control question is Gallup's query about waiting period, which is posed in a way that assumes the waiting period really would help the police keep guns away from illegitimate owners: "Would you favor or oppose a national law requiring a seven-day waiting period before a handgun could be purchased, in order to determine whether the prospective buyer has been convicted of a felony or is mentally ill." Contrary to Gallup's hypothesis, even criminologists who favor gun control have concluded that criminal and mental records are frequently not accurate enough to allow the police "to determine whether the prospective buyer has been convicted of a felony or is mentally ill." Nor are they accurate enough to allow such a check to be completed within seven days. Indeed, the debate in Congress over a waiting period focused heavily on whether state criminal records were good enough for a waiting period to be implemented right away, or whether it would be better to first spend several years improving the quality of existing records. Gallup, however, told his respondents to assume the very point that was at the heart of the controversy. One of the most central disputed facts having been assumed away, it was not surprising that Gallup found a huge majority in favor of a waiting period. How much effect does the argumentative question have on gun control responses? In 1977, Schuman and Presser investigated that issue. They asked about support for requiring a police permit before a person could obtain a gun; one question was neutral, the other question (asked to a different sample) was argumentative against gun control. The anti-control argumentative questions resulted in 1.7% to 6.4% drops in support for control, depending on the year. On average, then, the argumentative pro-control questions increase the stated level of support for control by roughly 4%. Sometimes a question itself may be neutral, but the meaning of the question may be distorted by the media pollster. For example, a media pollster may announce that the results of a question about one issue indicate the public's attitude on an entirely different issue. For example, in 1975 Gallup asked Americans: "In Massachusetts a law requires that a person who carries a gun outside his home must have a license to do so. Would you approve or disapprove of having such a law in your state?" Seventy-seven percent approved of such a law in their state. The result was to be expected, for the vast majority of Americans as of 1975 lived in a state that has similar legislation. Requiring a permit for carry outside the home was not unique to Massachusetts. Over three-quarters of the states required either a permit to carry a gun or a permit to carry a concealed gun. Yet Gallup did not announce "Most People Support Existing Gun Carry Laws," even though that was all his survey had shown. What Gallup claimed in his article was that the public supported "a specific plan...based on a law now in effect in Massachusetts." Gallup explained that the new Bartley Fox law in Massachusetts requires that "Anyone who is convicted of carrying a gun without a license is given a mandatory sentence of one year in jail." The one year mandatory sentence was, of course, precisely what made the Massachusetts law different from every other state's. Gallup claimed that the American public supported the stern mandatory sentencing law; but Gallup had never asked them about it. Gallup's actual question merely mentioned the (ubiquitous) permit to carry provision and omitted the (controversial) mandatory sentence provision. How many Americans actually do favor a one-year mandatory minimum? The analytical poll conducted by Cambridge Research Associates in 1978 asked that question, and found 55% support. The fifty-five percent is still a majority, but far from the overwhelming consensus falsely reported by Gallup. Gallup's misreporting had exaggerated public support for the mandatory sentence by 22%. A. Questions about "Assault Weapons" On the "assault weapon" controversy, most of the questions in media polls were argumentative, or were cited for a policy that had never been included in the polls, or both. Pollsters often asked questions about guns that were very different from the subject of the legislative controversy. Before looking at the polls, it is necessary to examine precisely what guns the controversy involved. The Department of Defense's Defense Intelligence Agency has long had a simple definition of "assault rifle": an intermediate caliber rifle or carbine capable of selective fire. In other words, a rifle like a soldier carries, capable of fully automatic fire. Examples would be the U.S. Army M-16, and the Soviet Army AK-47. Only a few hundred AK-47s have ever been imported into the United States. Ever since the National Firearms Act of 1934, possession of automatics, such as assault rifles, has required an FBI background check, a $200 tax, and a six-month wait. Even stricter legislation was enacted in 1986 concerning civilian ownership of military assault rifles (and other full automatics). The intense national controversy over "assault weapons" that occurred in 1989, and lingers to some degree today, had nothing to do with those fully automatic guns. Automatics, such as assault rifles, fire automatically. If the shooter squeezes the trigger, bullets will fire automatically and continuously until the trigger is released. It would not be surprising to find that most people favor strict controls over such rapid-fire guns. In contrast, semiautomatic firearms cannot fire automatically. If the shooter squeezes the trigger, only one shot is fired. Each shot requires an additional trigger squeeze. A semiautomatic's rate of effective fire is nearly the same as (about 1/10th of a second faster) most other guns. Old-fashioned and common guns such as bolt action, lever action, pump action, and revolver all fire at essentially the same rate as a semiautomatic. All of the common gun types (semiautomatic, bolt action, lever action, pump action, and revolver) fire much slower than full automatics. Some semiautomatics have brown, natural wood stocks attached. Other semiautomatics come with black, futuristic plastic stocks. Functionally, the guns are identical, since their internal parts operate on exactly the same principle. Some of the black-stock semiautomatics look like assault rifles (which are automatics). For example, the semiautomatic AKS looks like the fully automatic AK-47, but does not function like the AK-47. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, guns like the (semi-automatic) AKS are functionally identical to common and well-known sporting guns such as Remington hunting rifles. The guns that were the subject of anti-gun lobby's push for weapons control were all semiautomatics. Examples were the Colt AR-15 Sporter, and the Norinco AKS. The guns looked like assault rifles, and had names similar to assault rifles. But they were not fully automatic. Nevertheless, pollsters often asked questions that about full automatics. Questions are frequently asked about a ban on the "AK-47," which is a full automatic. It impossible to know what respondents thought when they were asked a question about rapid-fire guns, which the semi-automatic is not. For example, Gallup asked about banning "semi-automatic assault guns, such as the AK-47." The polls sometimes hypothesized a degree of legal regulation of full automatics far less than the law existing since 1934. The Texas Poll asked if sale of "assault weapons remains legal, should there be a mandatory seven-day waiting period to purchase a high-caliber, fast-firing assault rifle." Ever since 1934, there has been not a "seven-day waiting period," but a six month transfer application period. Thus, the Texas Poll found 89% of Texans in favor of something far less strict than the existing federal law_one that had been in place for 56 years. Yet the Texas Poll was used to promote prohibition on semiautomatics_which the question had not even asked about. Further, the Texas Poll incorrectly described the guns as "high caliber." In contrast, the Defense Intelligence Agency definition of "assault rifle" includes only guns that are intermediate in caliber or stopping power. Real assault rifle ammunition is "intermediate" in stopping power between handgun ammunition and full battle-rifle ammunition (such as for a Browning Automatic Rifle). Semiautomatics which look like real assault rifles are also intermediate in caliber. They, like true assault rifles, fire intermediate rifle calibers like the .223 Remington. Many traditional big game weapons fire larger calibers, such as .378 Weatherby. Most people's common sense would suggest that larger calibers are more deadly, and medical research confirms this intuition. Thus, it would be expected that persons asked a question about controls on "high caliber" guns in particular would be more supportive than they might be about gun control in general. The results from the "high caliber" gun question were touted in legislatures to promote laws that did not regulate high caliber guns, but instead applied to intermediate caliber arms. In 1990, the anti-gun lobby Handgun Control, Inc. circulated a report listing the results of sixteen organizations' national and state polls, all claiming huge majorities in favor of a strict control. Fourteen of the media pollsters had factual errors in their questions of the type detailed above. Several of them were also argumentative. Unfortunately, the pollsters who did not have factual errors did not ask about prohibition of semi-automatics, but instead asked about lesser control. Therefore, it is difficult to guess what percentage of the population actually does favor prohibition of some or all semi-automatics. The two (non-flawed) questions did, however, reveal public support for treating semi-automatics with approximately the same strictness that the public supports for handguns. Virginia's Mason-Dixon Poll found 81% in favor of requiring "a permit in order to purchase a semi-automatic firearm." This percentage is very similar to what the public favors for handguns; Caddell's survey found 82% in favor of a "permit or license to purchase." The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute found 91% in favor "requiring the owners of semi-automatic rifles to register their weapons with the state."12 Again, the result was within the sampling error range of Caddell's result for handguns. He had found 84% in favor of registering handguns at the time of transfer.13 The 14 pollsters, including Gallup and Harris, who asked factually incorrect (and sometimes argumentative) questions found gigantic majorities in favor of complete prohibition. The results were probably an accurate gauge of public opinion too_for what they asked about. They asked about the guns as a soldier carries like an "AK-47" or an "M-16" or an "assault rifle" or "assault weapon." Thus, the public seems to favor the currently federal policy, which bans all automatics manufactured after 1986. Unfortunately, the 14 polls finding large public support for prohibition of military guns were misused to promote controls on very different guns. Most states that studied the semiautomatic issue studied proposals for a total ban. Total bans were rejected in over two dozen states, and enacted in two (California, New Jersey). Despite the rhetoric of organizations such as Handgun Control, Inc., the rejection of the bans in most places was not necessarily contrary to popular will. The pollsters (Gallup) had found that bans were supported nationally by 72% of the population, from a low of 57% (Georgia) to a high of 78% (Massachusetts)_but they had asked about guns that were already banned (like the AK-47 and M-16). Sloppy question construction essentially ruined the utility of the polls conducted by 14 of the 16 organizations. They found, unsurprisingly, a large majority in favor of a gun ban that had been on the books since 1986. The public's affirmation of a law (about automatics) already in effect was misused to promote passage of entirely different laws, having nothing to do with "high caliber" "assault weapons" like the "M-16" and "AK-47." In Virginia and Maryland, the legislatures passed laws making some semiautomatics subject to the same police background check as handguns.14 The Virginia and Maryland legislatures seemed to come closer to what the two non-flawed polls actually showed the larger segment of the public to want (approximately the same controls as are applied to handguns). Because media reports of the polls do not reprint the actual question that was asked, readers are often prevented from even attempting to evaluate the distorting effect of misleading questions.15 B. Sloppy Questions The propensity for sloppy questioning leading to results of little practical value is not confined to questions about "assault weapons." At least in regard to "assault" guns, pollsters might be excused for making a technical error in describing guns, a subject with which their question-writers apparently had little practical familiarity. Other sloppy questions do not stem from technical mistakes. One of the most opaque gun questions was asked by Harris in January 1969, a few months after Congress had passed the first comprehensive national gun control law, the Gun Control Act of 1968: "Specifically, how would you rate the job Congress has done on not passing gun control legislation_excellent, pretty good, only fair or poor?"16 A strong opponent of gun control would have to answer "only fair" or "poor," because Congress had just enacted gun control legislation; a person favoring an absolutist interpretation of the right to bear arms could hardly say that a Congress which had just enacted the most sweeping federal gun control law in American history had done an "excellent" or "pretty good" job in "not passing gun control legislation." Harris found that 59% of the country gave Congress low marks on the job of "not passing gun control legislation." While the results would seem to indicate opposition to federal gun control, the results were claimed to show public support for strict gun laws. And it is true that a gun prohibitionist, feeling that the Gun Control Act of 1968 did not go nearly far enough, might also give Congress low marks on "not passing gun control legislation." Thus, persons who thought there was too much federal gun control, and persons who thought there was too little, might both answer that Congress had done a "fair" or "poor" job of "not passing gun control legislation." The question was, accordingly, worthless for research purposes. The most that the question revealed was that Harris himself apparently did not know about the 1968 Act, or thought that it did not go nearly far enough. C. Overly General Questions Another type of question which may lead to misleading results is the overly general question. Since at least 1975, Gallup has been asking if "the laws covering the sale of firearms should be more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now."17 Yankelovich asks the same question.18 The question is only a useful policy guide if the public actually knows that the current "laws concerning the sale of firearms" are. Unfortunately, Wright, Rossi, & Daly found "a substantial degree of misinformation on the matter." As a result, public "opinion that the existing measures should be made tougher is rather difficult to interpret meaningfully."19 For example, one Missouri newspaper excitedly headlined "Voters Back Gun Control." Yet analysis of the question indicated that a majority opposed laws as strict those in effect in Missouri for 65 years (apparently unbeknownst to most of its population).20 A question about whether present gun laws should be made stricter will be even less meaningful if the interviewer creates the incorrect impression that present laws are much weaker than they actually are. Gallup's first question in 1989 and 1990 asked about banning the "AK-47." The question assumed that the AK-47 (banned since 1986) was legal. If respondents believed that the first question was factually accurate (that AK-47s were legal), then they would be likely to favor making laws stricter than "they are now." Not surprisingly, most of Gallup's respondents thought that gun laws should be stricter than "they are now." Of all social science work conducted, media polling such as Gallup's is near the top in influence on public policy. Unfortunately, it may be that Gallup's staff is not in touch with the world of academic social science. If the Gallup staff were even peripherally in touch with academic social science, Gallup might stop asking flawed question such as whether gun laws should be stricter "than they are now." It is unfortunate that the Gallup Poll apparently never became aware of the Wright, Rossi & Daly critique of the type of question Gallup uses. Even questions which are slightly more specific may involve huge ambiguities. For example, a pollster may ask about requiring a "license" to own a gun. Do the "yes" respondents favor a system like that in Illinois, where everyone who is not insane or a criminal is readily granted a license, or like that in New York City, where virtually none of the applicants get a license?21 D. Questions that are Never Asked One gun control question which has been conspicuous by its absence is the "instant check" for handgun buyers. Since 1988, there has been no disagreement about the issue of federally mandated pre-purchase screening of gun buyers. Both the largest anti-gun lobby, Handgun Control, Inc., and the largest pro-gun lobby, the National Rifle Association, have agreed that the federal government should encourage states to check handgun purchasers for records of criminal convictions. The two organizations have sharply disagreed, however, about the mechanism for the check. Handgun Control, Inc. favors a seven day waiting period, during which police officials would have the option of conducting a background check. The National Rifle Association prefers an instant telephone check, whereby a gun dealer calls criminal justice records number to verify a prospective purchaser's eligibility, much as the dealer already calls a credit card hotline to verify the purchaser's use of a credit card. Because for the last four years the debate has been "waiting period" vs. "instant check," it might be expected that media pollsters would have repeatedly queried the public about which screening mechanism the public endorsed. But in fact, no media pollsters asked such questions. Instead, the pollsters asked only whether a waiting period was a good idea, and not whether an instant check was an even better idea. Regarding the waiting period in isolation, Gallup (using an argumentative question) found 95% support, and other pollsters reported similar numbers. Handgun Control, Inc. insisted that polls proved that the public favored the Handgun Control waiting period. In May 1991, Lawrence Research conducted an analytical poll, and found that while 85% of the public liked the idea of a waiting period, only 33% liked a bill with the features of Handgun Control's bill (such as making the check optional, and allowing lawsuits against police for an insufficiently thorough check).22 When presented with a choice between the instant telephone check and the waiting period, the public preferred the instant check 78% to 14%. It is unfortunate that during a four year period when Congress was debating the merits of a waiting period vs. an instant telephone check, no media pollster bothered to survey public attitudes on the question. Would it be cynical to suggest that the reason the question was never asked was that the media pollsters (correctly) feared that the answer would be an overwhelming preference for an instant check? A person who read only media polls might develop the impression that a substantial tightening of gun laws is a very important public policy objective for a very large majority of the American people. But when pollsters ask the general open-ended question, "What should be done about violent crime?" The percentage of people who answer "gun control" is often smaller than the sampling error.23 Reports of such polls do not, however, run under headlines such as "Few See Gun Control as Solution to Crime." If, on the other hand, the open-ended questions did find large spontaneous support for gun control, we expect that the media reports would focus on "Record Support for Gun Control." In sum, the formulation and reporting of gun control questions in media polls is seriously flawed. The flaws are so pervasive as to significantly undermine the reliability of the pro-control numbers reported by the media pollsters. The next section of the paper examines serious practical problems in conducting representative samples that threaten the accuracy of media polls. Two of the most serious errors are coverage errors and non-response errors. IV. SAMPLING BIASES ALL TOO OFTEN MEDIA POLLS EXHIBIT METHODOLOGICAL LIMITATIONS IN SAMPLING WHICH CAN COMPROMISE THEIR ACCURACY. THESE METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS ARE NOT UNIQUE TO GUN CONTROL POLLS, BUT THE PROBLEMS MAY HAVE A PARTICULARLY LARGE IMPACT ON QUESTIONS ABOUT SENSITIVE QUESTIONS SUCH AS GUN OWNERSHIP AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS GUN CONTROL. SOME ERRORS EXAGGERATE SUPPORT FOR GUN CONTROL WHILE OTHERS WORK IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. THIS SECTION EXAMINES "COVERAGE ERRORS" AS WELL AS "NON-RESPONSE ERRORS." AFTER DISCUSSING THE VARIOUS SOURCES OF ERRORS, WE CONCLUDE THAT THE NET RESULT ARTIFICIALLY EXAGGERATES POPULAR SUPPORT FOR GUN CONTROL MEASURES IN MEDIA POLLS. A. COVERAGE ERROR "COVERAGE ERROR" MEANS FAILING TO GIVE ANY CHANCE OF BEING SELECTED IN THE SURVEY TO SOME PERSONS IN THE "TARGET" POPULATION. THE THEORETICAL PRINCIPLES OF SAMPLING HAVE LONG BEEN KNOWN TO STATISTICIANS, BUT THE PRACTICAL PROBLEMS ARE STILL QUITE DAUNTING _ AND QUITE EXPENSIVE.24 This section looks at problems that can invalidate a sample's accuracy over and above the purely statistical limitations of sampling, known as sampling error. Since almost all public surveys are conducted over the telephone, this discussion will be limited to telephone surveys.25 Conducting a sample of the general population involves two distinct stages: [1] selecting a random sample of households, and [2] selecting respondents randomly from within households. In selecting a sample of households, the first consideration is to get a complete list of the telephone numbers for the target population. If the target population has been selected as "all households in the state," failure to include households without telephones is called "coverage error," as is failure to include people who are not-at-home or who refuse to participate when the interviewer calls their household. Such errors are critical because the resulting sample may not reflect all segments of the target population. The proliferation of computers during the past few decades has meant a tremendous increase in the use of "random digit dialing" [RDD] methods.26 Only the smallest and least sophisticated media polls still depend upon directory-based sampling methods. Polls using directory-based methods simply cannot be relied upon. Nevertheless, despite the widespread use of RDD, it is still not possible to guarantee coverage of all households in a state. This might seem surprising because of the high penetration of telephones in the 1990's, but it is true. Across the United States, the percentage of households who do not have telephones varies from 4% to 7%. More importantly, the likelihood of telephone ownership varies with family income, race, age and region.27 These biases are well known to most professional pollsters, who attempt to correct for them by weighting the sample to achieve the regional, sex, or race distributions that they decide is best. Unfortunately, studies have shown that weighting only partially corrects for these biases and occasionally exacerbates them.28 Households without telephones differ from those with telephones, so no amount of weighting can replace the use of proper sampling methods. The extent of bias in media polls that derives from the use of improper sampling methods remains to be systematically evaluated, but it is non-trivial, particularly in media polls done for regional papers. Attitudes towards gun control varies across social groups so that differential sampling across these groups is bound to have an impact upon the relative support that is reported.29 However, it is difficult to assess the effects of sampling upon gun ownership or attitudes towards gun control legislation because reported gun ownership is negatively associated with some of these factors and positively associated with others.30 The likelihood of both firearm and telephone ownership increases with family income, but firearms ownership is higher in the West and the South where telephone coverage is its lowest.31 Telephone ownership is higher among whites than non-whites, and whites are more likely to report owning firearms.32 Finally, telephone ownership is lowest in rural areas_precisely where firearms ownership is highest.33 While it is difficult to fully assess, the net impact of coverage errors is probably in favor of gun ownership and thus would tend to exaggerate the anti-control opinions. Proper sampling involves more than merely finding a representative sample of households. A more difficult challenge is to successfully interview respondents from within a household. The most important problem associated with within-household sampling is called "non-response error," which consists of two intertwined problems: finding respondents at home and getting them to participate in the survey. The key to reducing non-response error is the number of "callbacks." 34 If budgets are tight, it can be tempting to reduce the number of callbacks that are made to a household. Callbacks are expensive and it costs less for interviewers to simply call the next number on the list than to schedule time to pursue "incompletes." Top quality survey firms make as many as 20 attempts to call back after the targeted respondent, while low-quality survey houses may not make any.35 Callbacks are critical because the people who are easiest to contact differ from those who are more difficult to find, and who therefore require more callbacks to reach; for example, unemployed people, retired, or housewives are easier to find at home than are people who are employed, particularly men, or poorer people.36 For example, in a 1984 pre-election survey, Traugott found that repeated callbacks increased Reagan's plurality over Mondale from 3% to 12%.37 Refusals pose an even more important problem than not-at-homes. Not only are estimates of the refusal rate in commercial media polls over 25%,38 but, in addition, the demographics of the refusers is related to features which correllate with owning ot not owning guns. In a wide variety of studies, refusers have been found to be older males, people with a high-school level of education or lower, and to be non-whites.39 Since education level and gender have been found to be associated with opposition to stricter gun-control legislation,40 the net result is a small bias against those groups who oppose stricter gun-control laws. Refusal rates are even higher for surveys dealing with sensitive issues such as gun ownership. In a survey of Louisiana automobile owners so few blacks participated that the survey had to be limited to whites only.41 Our knowledge of gun ownership is limited by how willing people are to report they own a gun. If some groups are more reluctant than others to admit to owning a firearm, than what we believe about the social patterns of gun ownership may be seriously skewed. As well, if people who own firearms are more likely to refuse to participate in surveys, then their opinions would be systematically under-represented in polls. Non-response bias in media polls would appear to exaggerate support for stricter gun-control legislation. This follows primarily because errors due to non-response error (i.e., refusals and not-at-homes) are larger than those due to coverage errors. In short, the demographics that favor stricter gun legislation tend to be over-represented in media polls. B. Fraud and Lies Another potential problem with sampling is fraud on the part of the sampler. The media organizations which conduct media polls have no financial incentive to spend resources guarding against errors or fraud; the media have even less incentive to monitor closely the quality of the polling conducted by Gallup or Harris. Accordingly, evidence of fraud is uncovered only sporadically, if ever. In 1968, the New York Times hired Gallup to conduct a survey of Harlem residents. The results were so interesting that an editor sent a reporter and photographer to do follow-up stories of some of the Harlem residents who had been interviewed. But at 7 of the 23 addresses that Gallup gave the Times, there was no dwelling. At 5 more, there was a dwelling, but the person allegedly polled did not live there, and the people who did live there had never heard of the person. Even the respondents that did actually exist turned out to be somewhat different than Gallup had reported. One "respondent" was a composite of four people playing cards.42 In one Harris poll, the employee selecting the sample cities chose them not for methodological reasons, but because they had interesting names.43 In another Harris poll (this one conducted for a private organization), the initial round of polling omitted some questions that the organization had wanted asked. At the client's insistence, Harris sent follow-up mail questionnaires to all the persons who had been interviewed. Twenty-five percent of second surveys sent to the original "respondents" were returned as undeliverable, because there was no such address, or no such person.44 The anecdotes illustrate one reason why analytical polls may be more accurate than the media polls: the client has a larger financial stake in quality control. It is impossible to conclude from anecdotes that fraud is rife within media polling. It is also impossible to exclude the possibility, particularly since the persons hired to actually conduct the interviewers tend to be young, and poorly attached to the labor force. If fraud were not uncommon, it might be expected that the fraudulent poll-takers would be more likely to make up anti-gun responses from their non-existent interviewees, since the population segment most commonly hired as poll-takers, urban females, is also the most anti-gun segment. Interviewers are, of course, not the only people who lie. Respondents may lie too. It has been suggested the 1973 Gallup and Harris surveys on the impeachment of President Nixon underestimated the breadth of support for impeachment because respondents were afraid that a pro-impeachment answer might expose them to retaliation from the government.45 Whether the respondents' fears were realistic is irrelevant to the question of whether the fear induced the respondents to lie. In regard to gun control polling, there could be potential for fearful respondents to lie. During the 1989-90 controversy over "assault weapons," many politicians were calling for the confiscation of all such weapons in private hands. If a respondent owned an "assault weapon" and feared confiscation, he might also fear that a strong pro-gun response might indicate that he could be seen as an "assault weapon" owner. Again, whether the fear was realistic does not matter. The possibility that some gun owners may lie to "protect" themselves relates to the larger problem of respondent refusal to answer. Questions about firearms ownership are highly reactive, much like questions about personal income or sexual or criminal activities. Hence, these questions have a higher rate of refusal than other less reactive questions, so that people who answer such questions may differ from the full sample. It would certainly be consistent with the stereotype of gun owners for the typical (slightly paranoid) gun owner to refuse to answer any questions about guns with a stranger over the phone. But because media polls typically do not report raw figures, the drop-off is invisible. While survey methods have vastly improved since Gallup first introduced polls in the 1930s, polling is still a challenging endeavor fraught with many perils. There are still many ways in which errors or biases can be introduced, in part because top quality survey methods are very expensive. In the case of media polls, where budgets are so tight, the commitment to top quality methods may too frequently have to be sacrificed to meager budgets. Additionally, it may be easy to sacrifice quality because it is so difficult for readers to discover what methods were actually employed and if any short cuts had been adopted. In sum, the problems with sampling are understood theoretically, but too often, due to budget constraints or lack of concern, ignored by the media pollsters. V. INTERVIEWER EFFECTS IN ADDITION TO PROPER QUESTIONS AND SCIENTIFIC SAMPLING METHODS, AN ACCURATE POLL REQUIRES PROFESSIONAL INTERVIEWING, A CHALLENGE AS COMPLEX AS SAMPLING BUT LESS WELL UNDERSTOOD THEORETICALLY. INTERVIEWING REFERS TO THE GENERAL PROBLEM OF QUESTIONING PEOPLE TO ELICIT THEIR OPINIONS OR BELIEFS. SINCE THE OBJECTIVE IS TO DISCOVER WHAT THE RESPONDENT BELIEVES, THE INTERVIEWER SHOULD NOT INTRODUCE HIS OR HER OWN OPINIONS. AN INTERVIEW IS A CONVERSATION BETWEEN TWO PEOPLE, AND, DESPITE THE BEST TRAINING, ALL OF THE COMPLEXITIES OF HUMAN INTERACTION COME INTO PLAY. AT THE VERY START OF A TELEPHONE INTERVIEW, RESPONDENTS CAN IDENTIFY THE INTERVIEWER'S GENDER. WITHIN A FEW MINUTES, A RESPONDENT CAN OFTEN IDENTIFY AN INTERVIEWER'S RACE, SOCIAL CLASS, AND WHERE HE OR SHE GREW UP. EVEN IF RESPONDENTS ARE MISTAKEN, THEIR GUESSES STILL INFLUENCE THEIR ANSWERS. INTERVIEWER EFFECTS ARE A POTENTIAL PROBLEM IN ALL SURVEY RESEARCH STUDIES, BUT THEIR IMPORTANCE IS SUBSTANTIALLY LARGER IN SURVEYS DEALING WITH SENSITIVE QUESTIONS.46 Interviewer effects have been found to be more important in telephone polls than in face-to-face surveys.47 This follows because each interviewer is responsible for a larger number of respondents in telephone surveys than in other kinds of surveys. Awareness of interviewer effects is not new. Early survey researchers found that respondents were influenced by the race of the interviewer.48 The effect of race appears to be limited to race-related questions and has been found to exist for both white and black interviewers.49 Race is not the only interviewer characteristic that has been shown to influence respondents. Religion, age, social class, and sex differences have all been found to be important.50 In questions about abortion, female interviewers receive more "pro-choice" responses, and male interviewers receive more "pro-life" responses.51 The predominant explanation is that many respondents tailor their responses to conform to expectations or to perceived social norms.52 Respondents exaggerate their degree of schooling, and refuse to acknowledge their (private) support for political candidates considered extremist and unpopular (such as Barry Goldwater in 1964 and George Wallace in 1968). After President Kennedy was assassinated, few respondents admitted voting against him. During Watergate, a majority of Californians claimed to have voted for George McGovern_even though Nixon carried the state by 1,126,249 votes!53 In many cases, interviewer effects (or more precisely, respondents' desire to give responses which they think will please the interviewer) have been found to be substantially larger than sampling error.54 Two studies estimate that interviewer effects are about 5% to 7% of total response variance.55 However, this study averaged effects across both sensitive and non-sensitive questions. Unfortunately, too many media polls ignore the problem of interviewer bias or assume it away. While it is true that no researcher can successfully deal with all possible problems in any given survey, it is necessary to address the major problems or else one is forced to accept a low level of quality. Interviewer effects can be expected to cause problems in surveys on firearms issues not only because of the sensitivity of questions dealing with firearms, but also because of the social differences between interviewers and the respondents most likely to be pro-gun. Historically, urban-rural differences are one of the most important cleavages in politics, along with race, religion, and social class.56 In understanding public attitudes towards gun control, the most important variable is (not surprisingly) firearms ownership.57 Gun owners tend disproportionately to be rural and small town middle-class males.58 In contrast, telephone survey interviewers tend to be urban females, who are unlikely to own guns and are likely to support severe gun control. Accordingly, it is entirely possible that respondents answering questions about gun control posed by urban females might be inclined to give more pro-control answers. VI. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION For many years, academics have been discussing the significance of the large pro-control sentiment reported by the media polls. Hazel Erskine complained "It is difficult to imagine any other issue on which Congress has been less responsive to public sentiment for a longer period of time." More recently, Douglas Jeffe and Sherry Bebitch Jeffe examined gun control polling, and predicted that a wave of prohibitions on "semiautomatic assault weapons" would "reduce the NRA to a voice in the wilderness."59 Jeffe and Jeffe made their prediction in an article discussing the results of a 1989 CNN/Los Angeles Times poll. The prediction of Jeffe and Jeffe turned out to be inaccurate. Only one state besides California enacted an "assault weapon" law, and in that state (New Jersey) the legislature voted to rescind much of the law the next year. Jeffe and Jeffe were not, however, guilty of a unique error. Reports in media polls of huge pro-control majorities have often been accompanied by incorrect predictions of the enactment of stricter gun laws. Various hypotheses have been offered as to why there is such a large discrepancy between public opinion polls and legislative action. One theory has been that opponents of control hold their views with more intensity than do proponents of control, and hence exert greater influence. One way to test the intensity hypothesis has been to ask respondents how strongly they feel about the gun control issue. In the polls conducted by Schuman and Presser, and the polling conducted by Caddell (none of these polls being "media polls"), it was the proponents of control who were more likely to describe the gun issue as important to themselves, and as an important basis for their votes.60 If the polling results about intensity are accurate, the gap between public opinion and legislative action becomes even more difficult to explain, since the gun control advocates are not only more numerous, but also more inclined to take political action on their beliefs. But actual behavior does not comport with the polling results. The largest pro-gun organization, the National Rifle Association, has 2.5 million members, while the largest anti-gun organization, Handgun Control, Inc., has only 200,000. The mail received by most legislative offices generally runs at least 12:1 in favor of the pro-gun side. (In rural districts, the pro-gun advantage may be 100:1.) Pro-gun rallies at state capitols routinely draw hundreds, and sometimes tens of thousands of people. Few anti-gun organizations have enough grassroots strength to even schedule a rally. In short, if "intensity" is measured by visible involvement in public policy questions, the pro-gun forces are far more intense. Thus, the "intensity of activity" hypothesis seems plausible, and may explain much of the discrepancy between public opinion polls and actual political results. The fact that so many respondents claim to have intense feelings in favor of gun control, but very few of those persons seems to act on those stated "intense" feelings, may be further support for an interviewer effect in gun control polling. Some respondents may feel that they are pleasing the interviewer by claiming that the anti-gun position is one of their most important political beliefs. Besides the intensity hypothesis, another explanation for why legislative results are so divergent from media poll results about gun control may be that the polls themselves substantially overstate public support for gun control. The only research done thus far on that question was conducted by Schuman and Presser, who found that variations in question formulation accounted for a 1.7% to 6.4% variance in survey results. Schuman and Presser rejected the hypothesis that polling results are far out of line with actual public opinion; the authors noted, correctly, than even with a 6.4% variance, the reported level of support for gun control was still quite high. Schuman and Presser, however, analyzed only one of the potential factors potentially causing inaccuracy in polling_the impact of argumentative polling questions themselves. This paper has attempted to more broadly survey several factors which, cumulatively, could sharply skew the results in public opinion polls on gun control. These factors are most commonly present in the hastily-conducted surveys which we have dubbed "media polls." Our review shows that media polls typically exhibit numerous problems. The poll questions themselves suffer from myriad flaws, which give an unduly simplified view of public opinion. Slanted, loaded, or technically incompetent questions are common, and results are often claimed to support a position that was never queried. For example, questions asking about bans on particular models of fully-automatic firearms are used as evidence of public support for prohibition of semiautomatics. Short question series fail to explore respondents' opinions adequately. Questions about whether gun laws should be made stricter do not examine whether the respondents understand what the present laws are. The media typically only ask about the desirability of gun control and not about the right to bear arms or about alternative strategies for dealing with violent crime.61 A second major possible distorting factor in media polls stems from the lack of outside quality controls on media polls, and the propensity to produce results in a hurry. Methodological limitations arise which may over-emphasize the views of relatively anti-gun segments of the population (urban females) and under-emphasize the views of pro-gun segments (males with full-time jobs). In addition, the most militant gun owners may have reasons of their own for refusing to communicate their militancy to strangers on the telephone. Lastly, since most interviewers are urban females (an anti-gun group), it has been suggested that interviewer effect might produce relatively more anti-gun answers. Preliminary research suggests that the interviewer effect relating to gender may change the intensity of an answer, but not the basic position expressed. In sum, media polls on gun control are often not scientific and should be interpreted with caution. Media polls may tend to exaggerate popular support for sterner gun control measures. ENDNOTES 1 David Bordua, "Gun Control and Opinion Measurement: Adversary Polling and the Construction of Social Meaning," in Don B. Kates, Jr. [ed] Firearms and Violence, Issues of Public Policy. (San Francisco: Pacific Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984); and William R. Tonso, "Social Problems and Sagecraft: Gun Control and the Social Scientific Enterprise," in Don B. Kates, Jr. [ed], ibid; William R. Tonso. Gun and Society, The Social and Existential Roots of the American Attachment to Firearms. (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982). 2 Cambridge Reports, An Analysis of Public Attitudes Toward Handgun Control (Cambridge, Mass., June 1978). Decision Making Information, Attitudes of the American Electorate Towards Gun Control 1978 (Santa Ana, California, 1978). Both surveys reported consistent findings that about 40-50% of U.S. households owned some kind of gun, and about half of those households owned a handgun. The two surveys agreed that about 7% of adults carry a gun on their person, and that 40% of handgun owners bought their weapon mainly for self-protection. About 15% of all registered voters or their families had used a gun in self-defense (including by brandishing it). Caddell reported that 2% of all adults had personally fired a handgun in self-defense; DMI found that 6% of all registered voters or their families had fired a gun in self-defense. The incidence of firearms accidents was about equal to the incidence of firearms use for self-defense. The two surveys also produced similar results about gun control. Regarding mandatory prison sentences for criminals who use a gun, Caddell found 83% support, and DMI found 93% support. Requiring detailed record-keeping by gun dealers was favored by 54% of the DMI respondents, and 49% of Caddell's. Caddell found about 62% of the population against a ban on handgun ownership, while DMI found 83% opposed. Each survey found 40-50% agreeing that stricter gun controls would reduce crime. 78% of Caddell's sample thought that gun control laws only affect law- abiding citizens; 85-91% of DMI's sample thought registration would not prevent criminals from acquiring handguns. About half of the DMI and Caddell samples agreed that national gun registration might eventually lead to total firearms confiscation. To the extent the surveys seemed to differ, it was usually because the pollsters had asked different questions. For example, 87% of DMI thought that the Constitution guaranteed an individual right to own a gun, and 53% of Caddell thought handgun licensing was Constitutional. The results were consistent, in that the majority may have felt that the Constitution guarantees a right to own a gun, but that handgun licensing does not violate that right. Thus, Wright, Rossi and Daly concluded: Despite the occasionally sharp differences in emphasis and interpretation...the actual empirical findings from the two surveys are remarkably similar. Results from comparable (even roughly comparable) items rarely differ between the two surveys by more than 10 percentage points, well within the "allowable" limits given the initial differences in sampling frame and the usual margin of survey error....[O]n virtually all points where a direct comparison is possible, the evidence from each survey says essentially the same thing. [p. 240]. In short, except for the fact that the two surveys came from different sides of the gun control debate and highlighted different aspects of their results, they were nearly identical. For a detailed comparison of these two polls, see Chapter 11, James D. Wright, Peter H. Rossi and Kathleen Daly. Under the Gun: Weapons, Crime and Violence in America. (New York: Aldine, 1983). 3 Don B. Kates, "Bigotry, Symbolism and Ideology in the Battle over Gun Control," Public Interest Law Review (Carolina Academic Press: 1992): 31-46. 4 "Under Fire," Time Magazine, January 29, 1990. 5 Gollin criticizes media polls for poor quality, but he does not specify which errors he is concerned about. Albert E. Gollin. "Polling and the News Media," Public Opinion Quarterly, 51 (no. 1, pt. 2), 1987, 86-94. 6 Cynthia Crossen, journalist for the Wall Street Journal, has argued that media polls are increasingly underfunded. See Globe and Mail, December 7, 1991, D5. For example, The Vancouver Sun, the largest daily in British Columbia, with a paid circulation of over 250,000, has a reputation of being cheap. For the past decade, the paper has relied upon the pollster with the worst record in the province because he was the low bidder. Since few editors were familiar with survey methods, the pollster had a free hand in conducting his polls, and because he is interested in profit, he has every reason to cut corners methodologically. 7 See Seymour Sudman and Norman M. Bradburn. Response Effects in Surveys: A Review and Synthesis. (Chicago: Aldine, 1974); Norman M. Bradburn, "Response Effects" in Peter H. Rossi, James D. Wright and Andy B. Anderson, (eds) Handbook of Survey Research, (New York: Academic Press, 1983); GE Lenski and J.C. Leggett. "Caste, Class, and Deference in the Research Interview," American Journal of Sociology. 1960. 65: 463-467. 8 For example, Associated Press, "Polls Shows Majority Favor Ban on Assault Weapons," Rocky Mountain News, March 19, 1989, p. 46: Los Angeles Times survey of "1,158 people...has a margin of error plus or minus 3 or 4 percentage points." For a Newsweek survey, "The telephone pole [sic] of 756 adults...has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points." 9 For a very readable account of the practical problems involved in conducting a modern survey study, and the kinds of potential errors, see Robert M. Groves, Survey Errors and Survey Costs. (New York: Wiley and Sons, 1989). 10 About 1/4 of American households contain a handgun, which means that about 1/4 of a nationwide sample of households would be expected to own a handgun. Thus, if the sampling error for the full sample is ± 2.5 percentage points, then for one-quarter of the sample the sampling error increases to ± 5 percentage points. 11 Robert S. Greenberg and John J. Fialka, "Calls by Some on GOP Right to Consider a Nuclear Strike Spark Heated Debate," Wall Street Journal, 1991. 12 Sept. 4-7, 1990. 13 Wright et al., supra, p. 223. 14 Maryland has a 14 day wait, and Virginia an instant telephone check. The Virginia check seems to have a lower error rate. 15 E.g., Associated Press, "Polls Shows Majority Favor Ban on Assault Weapons," Rocky Mountain News, March 19, 1989, p. 46 (reporting Los Angeles Times and Newsweek polls). 16 Reproduced in Hazel Erskine. "The Polls: Gun Control," Public Opinion Quarterly, vol. 36, 1972: 469. 17 "In general, do you feel the laws regarding covering the sale of firearms should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now." Gallup Polls, Sept. 10-11, 1990, reporting results for 1980, 1986, 1989, and 1990. Should the laws covering the sale of handguns be made more strict. Gallup, 1975, discussed in Don B. Kates, Jr. "Toward a History of Handgun Prohibition in the United States," in Don B. Kates, Jr. ed., Restricting Handguns: The Liberal Skeptics Speak Out (North River Press, 1979), p. 27. 18 Douglas Jeffe and Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, "Gun Control: A Silent Majority Raises Its Voice," Public Opinion, May/June 1989, p. 9 (survey for CNN/Los Angeles Times). 19 Wright, et al, supra, p 232, citing 1975 DMI poll for evidence of public misunderstanding of current laws. George Gallup, "Gun Control Plan Favored," supra, 1975. 20 Kates, "Towards a History," supra, p. 27. 21 Kates, ibid., p. 28. Franklin E. Zimring. "Firearms, Violence and Public Policy," Scientific American, November 1991, 265[5]: 48-54. 22 Dr. Gary C. Lawrence, "Results of a National Telephone Survey of Registered Voters on Waiting Period and Immediate Check Legislation," May 1991. The poll was commissioned by the National Rifle Association. As discussed above, the fact that an organization with an interest in the result has paid for analytical polling does not make the poll invalid. Polls paid for the anti-gun Center for the Prevention of Handgun Violence and the pro-gun National Rifle Association have found strikingly similar results. Apparently if an organization is willing to pay the fee for thorough analytical polling by a professional polling firm, the results come out the same no matter who writes the check. Handgun Control, Inc., Assault Weapons: Polling Data (1990). 23 Bordua, supra, p. 347-348. 24 The principle is that all elements of the target population must have a known_often equal_probability of being selected. 25 A potential source of error is that not everyone in the general population has a telephone. In the mid-1980s it was estimated that approximately 93% of all households in the US have a telephone. Owen T. Thornberry, Jr. and James T. Massey. "Trends in United States Telephone Coverage Across Time and Subgroups," in Robert M. Groves, Paul P. Biemer, Lars E. Lyberg, James T. Massey, William L. Nicholls II, Joseph Waksberg, eds., Telephone Survey Methodology (New York: Wiley & Sons, 1988.), p 29. 26 See James M. Lepkowski, "Telephone Sampling Methods in the United States," In Groves et al., supra, p.73 The use of RDD in almost all state-wide polls has eliminated the problem of unlisted numbers that plagues directory-based sampling methods. RDD means that telephone numbers are created randomly using computer-generated lists, based on the prefixes for the target area. Clearly, unlisted numbers_either new listings or private numbers_can be generated so that the researcher is not dependent upon published lists of telephone numbers. 27 Thornberry and Massey, in Groves et al., supra, p. 37. 28 James T. Massey and Steven L. Botman 1988. "Weighting Adjustments for Random Digit Dialed Surveys," in Groves, et al., supra, p 143. 29 See Gary A. Mauser and Michael Margolis. "The Politics of Gun Control: Comparing Canadian and American Patterns," Presented to the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 1990, and Arthur L. Stinchcombe, Rebecca Adams, Carol A. Heimer, Kim L. Scheppele, Tom W. Smith and D. Garth Taylor. Crime and Punishment _ Changing Attitudes in America (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1980). 30 Another problem is that the willingness of people to admit that they own a firearm may vary across social categories. This is discussed in the next section. 31 The percent of households without telephones is the highest in the South (10%), followed closely by the West (7%), then comes the Midwest (6%), and is lowest in the Northeast (4%). Thornberry and Massey, supra, p 29 32 The percent of households without telephones is 6% for whites, 16% for blacks, and 11% for other non-whites. Ibid, p. 30. 33 The percent of households without telephones in urban areas is 8%, rural farm is 5%, while rural non-farm areas average 10%. 34 Robert M. Groves and Robert L. Kahn. Surveys by Telephone (New York: Academic Press, 1979), p 55. 35 Personal communication, Bruce Campbell, President, Campbell and Associates, Vancouver, BC. 36 Michael W. Traugott "Persistence in Respondent Selection." Public Opinion Quarterly (Spring 1987), p. 53. 37 Ibid., p. 54. 38 Groves, supra, p. 155. 39 Ibid., p. 205-207. 40 Mauser and Margolis, supra, p. 17. 41 Bankston, Carol Y. Thompson, Quentin A.L. Jenkins, and Craig Forsyth, "The Influence of Fear of Crime, Gender, and Southern Culture on Carrying Firearms for Protection," Sociological Quarterly, 31[2]: 287-305, p. 302. 42 Michael Wheeler. Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics: The Manipulation of Public Opinion in America (New York: W.W. Norton, 1976; republished by Dell), p. 111. 43 Ibid., p. 95. 44 Ibid., p. 112. 45 Ibid., p. 117. 46 Robert M. Groves and L.J.Magilavy. "Estimates of Interviewer Variance in Telephone Surveys." Proceedings of Survey Research Methods Section, American Statistical Association, (1980), 622-62. 47 Groves and Magilvay, supra. 48 Daniel Katz. "Do interviewers bias poll results?" Public Opinion Quarterly (1942) 6:248-268; Henry Cantril, Gauging Public Opinion. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944). 49 Howard Schuman and Jean M. Converse. "The Effect of Black and White Interviewers on Black Responses in 1968." Public Opinion Quarterly,(1971), vol. 35: 44-68. 50 H.H. Hyman, W.J. Cobb, J.J. Feldman, and C.H. Stember. Interviewing in Social Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954); David Riesman, "Orbits of Tolerance, Interviewers and Elites," Public Opinion Quarterly (1956), vol. 20: 49-73; G.E. Lenski and J.C. Leggett. "Caste, Class, and Deference in the Research Interview," American Journal of Sociology, (1960) vol. 65: 463-467; Michael D. Grimes and Gary L. Hansen, "Response Bias in Sex-Role Attitude Measurement," Sex Roles, (1984), vol. 10 (nos. 1 & 2): 67-72. 51 In a 1990 Eagleton Institute poll, women gave 84% pro-choice responses to female interviewers, and 64% pro-choice responses to identical questions from male interviewers. Men gave 77% pro-choice responses to female interviewers, and 70% pro-choice responses to male interviewers. Ellen Goodman, "Lies, More Lies, and Then There's Good Ol' Pillow Talk," Rocky Mountain News, May 14, 1990, p. 142. 52 Seymour Sudman and Norman M. Bradburn. Response Effects in Surveys: A Review and Synthesis, (Chicago: Aldine, 1974). 53 Wheeler, supra, pp. 116-17. 54 Groves and Kahn, supra; and Groves and Magilavy, supra. 55 RH Hanson and ES Marks. "Influence of the Interviewer on the Accuracy of Survey Results," Journal of the American Statistical Association, (1958), vol. 53: 635-655.; Seymour Sudman, Norman M. Bradburn, Ed Blair, and Carol Stocking. "Modest Expectations: The Effects of Interviewers Prior Expectations on Responses," Sociological Methods and Research, (1977), vol. 6 (no. 2): 171-182. 56 Seymour M. Lipset Political Man: The Social Basis of Politics (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1964). 57 Stinchcombe et al, supra; Mauser and Margolis, supra. 58 Wright et al. supra, p. 107 59 Jeffe and Jeffe, supra, p. 57. 60 It is true that of the small number of respondents who said that gun control was "one of the most important" issues to them, comprised a larger proportion of the pro-gun respondents (7.3 - 8.7%) than of the anti-gun respondents (3.1% - 4.0%). But since the anti-gun respondents (those in favor of requiring a police permit to buy a gun) outnumbered the pro-gun respondents about 2:1, the absolute numbers of pro-gun and anti-gun persons calling the issue "one of the most important" would be approximately equal. Schulman and Presser, supra, pp. 432-35. 61 A commendable exception was the Yankelovich poll for CNN/Los Angeles Times, which asked a long battery of questions about firearms attitudes, and found 84% of respondents believing that they had a right to own a gun. See Jeffe & Jeffe, supra, p. 10. The ``Sporting Purpose'' Issue in Gun-Control Policy by Preston K. Covey A paper orginally presented at the Second International Symposium on Leisure & Ethics Denver, CO, April 11,1994 Preston K. Covey (Ph.D., Philosophy, Stanford University) is director of the Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches courses in ethics, public policy, conflict and dispute resolution, and the problem of violence in American society. Preston serves on the Advisory Board and as Pennsylvania Regional Director for the National Institute of Law Enforcement Ethics and as a sworn Deputy Sheriff in the Uniform Division of the Sheriff's Reserve of Allegheny County. He is a member of the American Society of Criminology, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, the Institute of Criminal Justice Ethics, the Society for Risk Analysis, the Institute for Research on Small Arms in International Security, the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers, the International Association for Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors (IALEFI), Editor of IALEFI's Standards and Practices Reference Guide, and an instructor in the judicious use of deadly force by police and civilians. In the context of gun-control policy, what does "sporting purpose" mean? Unfortunately, the term is ubiquitous but nowhere defined; its meaning must be divined from the legislative and enforcement debates. While the history of this notion in 20th-century gun control is itself very interesting, let's just take the most recent example: on February 28, 1994, the ATF reclassified certain 12-gauge shotguns as "destructive devices" on the basis of the following statutory provision (Section 5845(f)(2), Chapter 53, Title 26) of the United States Code: " '[D]estructive device' means . . . any type of weapon . . . which will . . . expel a projectile . . ., the barrel or barrels of which have a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter, except a shotgun . . . which the Secretary or his delegate finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes ...." The archetypal "destructive device" this legislation meant originally to control was on the order of a grenade launcher or artillery piece. But the barrel of a 12-gauge shotgun, at .60 caliber, happens to be over half an inch in diameter. Hence, the explicit exemption for shotguns. However, this exemption leaves a discretionary loophole: it is limited to shotguns which the Secretary or his delegate finds is generally recognized as particularly suitable for sporting purposes. This provision evidently gives the Secretary of the Treasury (who oversees the ATF) the authority to add certain "non-sporting" firearms to the bin of banned weapons. The express criterion for exemption is "sporting purpose." But what precisely is the standard for this privileged exemption? While the Secretary's discretionary judgment may legally be sufficient, the standard for guiding his appraisal of "suitability for sporting purposes" is whether a gun is generally recognized as such. But by what standard do we judge general recognition? This standard is nowhere defined. But the operative standard comes to this: the two most popular sporting purposes, hunting and target shooting, are evidently taken to satisfy the requirement. Unfortunately, this statutory language governing "destructive devices" reflects the sum total specification of the "sporting purpose" standard available in federal law, as an internal ATF memorandum on the recent shotgun reclassification attests: "This ruling represents a small step in imposing rational controls over the non-sporting assault-type weapons addressed in the Feinstein bill. With the exception of these large bore shotguns. There is currently no sporting purpose test in existing federal law governing the types of firearms that can be manufactured and sold commercially. [But] Feinstein's bill would ban . . . these shotguns as well as a host of other rifles and handguns that also provide tremendous firepower, while serving no legitimate sporting purpose." (Tartaro, 1994, emphasis mine.) In short, the ATF has the authority to ban only large bore shotguns; a ban on rifles and handguns which serve "no legitimate sporting purpose" must be effected by new legislation, such as the Feinstein bill. New legislation must now either beg the question of what constitutes "legitimate" sporting purpose or else clearly define a standard (which, of course, it does not do). But we see here a clue to the ulterior purpose of the de facto "sporting purpose" standard: to ban firearms that "provide tremendous firepower, while serving no legitimate sporting purpose." The targeted firearms are advisedly combat weapons that are currently legal to own. One combat weapon ban, the Schumer bill (HR 3527), is entitled (in part) the "Recreational Firearms Protection Act." By what principle of "legitimacy" or "recreational" utility are firearms nominated for such patronizing protection by our government? To paraphrase Uncle Remus, "The tar baby, he don't say nuthin." The tacit hypothesis here is this: If combat firearms serve no "legitimate" sporting purpose, they may or should be banned. I pose two problems for the "sporting purpose" hypothesis: (I) The hypothesis presupposes without argument that it is a proper function of government to prescribe "legitimate" leisure; such unprincipled and therefore arbitrary authority is politically pernicious, a threat to all socially harmless leisure, not to say morally controversial leisure. Hunting, as a so-called "blood sport," is morally controversial in many quarters of our society, but its tools as such are implicitly protected under the prevailing "sporting purpose" standard. With an essentially undefined and therefore arbitrary standard of "legitimate sporting purpose," just how long will the equally deadly tools of the recreational hunter or target shooter stay the ban? Be that as it may, (II) the assumption of this hypothesis is in any case demonstrably false _ namely, the assumption that combat firearms serve no "legitimate" sporting purpose. Problem I The "sporting purpose" hypothesis presupposes that government has the authority to judge what counts as "legitimate" leisure or sport and the power to curtail leisure activities which it deems illegitimate. The "Recreational Firearms Protection Act" decidedly does not protect all forms of firearms recreation, such as collecting and recreating with combat firearms. This arrogation of authority is tantamount to legislating ethics in the discretionary realm of leisure, where our modes of creating meaningful lives are presumably innocent until proven guilty of actionable harm to others or to society. This arrogation of authority is pernicious because it offers no principled rationale or limitations and thereby threatens the freedom of moral choice at the heart of all leisure pursuits, not just those involving firearms. We must distinguish here between two categorically different grounds for coercive limitations on liberty _ either for outlawing an activity itself (like gambling) or for outlawing the means for pursuing an activity (like child pornography or hard drugs). Two categorically different grounds for limiting liberty are: (1) moral disapproval and (2) demonstrable social harm. They are hardly on a par. Of these, in our system of criminal justice, demonstrable social harm is presumably a necessary condition for criminalization: by this standard, not even all uncontroversial moral wrongs are proscribed by criminal law: for example, many forms of lying or promise-breaking are, at best, grounds for civil tort action. The burden of proof, then, is either to demonstrate serious harm, irrespective of moral disapproval, or else to produce a principled rationale for why certain activities which are morally controversial but not in themselves harmful should be criminalized. Moral disapproval by itself is no basis for criminalization, absent some further discriminatory principle that answers the perennial questions for legislating morality: What or whose standard of moral opprobrium shall prevail and be enforced by law in morally controversial cases? And by what rationale or principle? One principle for prohibiting activities that may be morally controversial but that in themselves are not harmful turns on the distinction between distributive and aggregative harms. Distributively harmful activity is such that serious harm or social cost attaches to each and every individual instance of the activity in itself. An example is murder, each act of which is harmful. Aggregatively harmful activity is such that harm does not accrue to each and every individual enjoyment of the activity in itself; rather, because some people's activity is harmful, serious social harm results in the aggregate. An example is the use of motor vehicles, which some people drive recklessly. As a case in point, the civilian ownership of firearms is aggregatively rather than distributively harmful: merely owning a firearm produces no harm in itself; but a small minority who abuse firearms generate serious aggregative harm: the annual size of the offending minority happens to be small indeed _ less than 1/l00th of one percent of the law-abiding gun-owning public1 _ although the harm they do is serious. A prominent social philosopher puts the consequent dilemma in perspective: "If the state prohibits [responsible and law-abiding] persons from possessing handguns [say, or firearms "not generally recognized as particularly suitable to sporting purposes"], it must tell them, in effect, that they cannot do something which is harmless, because others cannot be trusted to do the same thing without causing grievous harm." (Feinberg, 1984, p. 194). On this view, the justification for gun bans (which disenfranchise a vast majority in order to try to affect a minuscule minority) must show at least two things: that the harms outweigh the benefits and that the prohibition in question will in fact redress the balance of harm over benefit. Both are problematic, particularly the latter: that disarming the law-abiding majority will in any wise affect the criminal minority (Polsby, 1993). But this is one proper function of government, balancing individual and social benefits and harms for the protection of the commonweal. If it is also a proper function of government to judge the "legitimacy" of leisure on moralistic grounds, absent a showing of harm, the standard of "legitimacy" must be specified; in the case of "legitimate" sporting purpose, the standard remains unprincipled and, thus, arbitrary. The invocation of "sporting purpose" is also problematic because it presupposes without argument that "sporting purpose" should carry special privileged weight in the balancing of harms and benefits. I argue, on the contrary, that the weightiest interest in the balance scale of benefits is not the recreational value of firearms, but rather their value for the protection of innocent life against criminal threat. The protective value of firearms has two dimensions: One is their defensive utility, the metric for which is the actuarial rate at which armed civilians successfully defend against criminal threats_most recently estimated at over two million cases a year (Kleck, 1993). The other is the incommensurable residual value of this option in self-defense itself, regardless of the actuarial utility of having a gun or ever having to use it. This residual value includes our claim right to be allowed effective means of self-defense (namely, firearms), which is directly derivative from our paramount right to self-preservation. Actuarially, a firearm happens to be one's best option in the gravest extreme2 when, by the universal standard of justifiable homicide, an innocent person is in imminent and otherwise unavoidable danger of death or grave bodily harm. Removing this option imposes a severe limitation on the exercise of our uncontroversial right to self-defense. Also included in the residual value of firearms for protection is our putative obligation to defend innocent life in the gravest extreme: many hold that this is not only a right but a moral and civic duty. In his article "A Nation of Cowards" (1993), Jeffrey Snyder put the matter forcefully: "Although difficult for modern man to fathom, it was once widely believed that life was a gift from God, that not to defend that life when offered violence was to hold God's gift in contempt, to be a coward and to breach one's duty to one's community." In addition to the distributive protective value of firearms, there are two aggregative benefits of armed citizens, a social value and a political value. Their social value consists in their role in the reduction of criminal violence or social disorder by either deterrence or interdiction. Their political value consists in their role as a defense or deterrent against government violation of the social compact. These functions may be arguable, but they must be fairly accounted and weighed in the balance scales on their merits, not summarily ignored. Now, the protective, social and political values of civilian firearms are all predicated on their utility for combat. Pace the more radical pacifists, combat is not inherently bad: combat can be defensive as well as aggressive and combat is therefore justifiable, and arguably obligatory, in defense of innocent life. There is a utopian concept that civil society must eschew the justifiable use of deadly force (or deadly weapons) in the hopes of thereby banishing violence; but a utopian mandate to eschew the moral right, nevermind the moral obligation, to defend innocent life belies the very value of human life itself. In his classic essay "Utopia and Violence," Karl Popper put the matter plainly: ". . . we must not allow the distinction between attack and defense to become blurred. We must insist upon this distinction, and support and develop social institutions . . . whose function it is to discriminate between aggression and resistance to aggression." (Popper, 1965) As for delegating the obligation for the defense of innocent life to others, such as the police, Jeffrey Snyder poses another moral challenge: "How can you rightfully ask another human being to risk his life to protect yours, when you will assume no responsibility yourself?" (Snyder, 1993) ". . . while we wait for laws to restrain men, we will be condemned to wonder why criminals have no respect for our lives, when we ourselves do not value our lives enough to assume the responsibility to defend them." (Snyder, 1994) These are serious moral issues to weigh in the balance scales before dismissing combat firearms for serving "no legitimate sporting purpose." Indeed, morally compelling (never mind "legitimate") interests in defensive combat place top priority on precisely those firearms that are "generally recognized as particularly suitable" for combat _ not merely sporting _ purposes. The prevailing notion of "sporting purpose" in the gun-control debate is problematic in three respects: (1) because it assumes without argument that the government of a pluralistic society may legislate "legitimate" leisure absent demonstrable social harm, (2) because the privileging of "sporting purpose" firearms ignores the preeminent protective, social and political values of combat firearms and (3) because it is gratuitous if not disingenuous for the following reason: if "sporting purpose" or recreational value were the only interest in the balance scale to counterweigh the aggregative harms of civilian-owned firearms, gun bans would hardly be as controversial as they are today. Suppose, unrealistically (Polsby, 1994), that all combat firearms were effectively removed from both civilian and criminal hands. Hunting and sanitized target firearms would then become the tools of criminal violence: How long would their "sporting purpose" stay their banishment? The inexorable logic of selective gun bans is that they must evolve into total bans: in the end, "sporting purpose" would be revealed to be the gratuitous and question-begging ploy it has been from the beginning. Problem II Consider again the tacit hypothesis behind the prevailing notion of "sporting purpose": If combat firearms serve no "legitimate" sporting purpose, they may or should be banned. I argue by counter-example that the assumption of this hypothesis (that combat firearms serve no legitimate sporting purpose) is false. While I make a case for "legitimate" sporting uses of combat firearms, I do not hereby beg any questions about gun control. My argument here is simply that "sporting purpose" is quite beside the point in gun-control policy if only because combat firearms do in fact enjoy legitimate sporting uses. The assumption that firearms can be neatly and categorically segregated by purpose and, hence, that firearms "generally recognized as particularly suitable for combat can serve no legitimate sporting purpose is based on a no-brainer fallacy, to wit: "Some guns are useful only for assault, warfare, murder or mayhem _ like the so-called 'assault weapons' (which should properly be called 'combat' firearms). "Law-abiding civilians have no legitimate interest in assault, warfare, murder, or mayhem. "Therefore, law-abiding civilians have no legitimate interest in combat firearms." The first premise and conclusion above are flatly false. Law-abiding civilians have a legitimate interest in combat for their own self-defense. Therefore, law-abiding civilians have a legitimate interest in combat firearms _ and, most certainly, in training therewith. This legitimate interest in firearms training for defensive purposes naturally gives rise to both legitimate and even socially useful sporting purposes for combat weapons, which I will call "combat weaponcraf