There's something fishy about Fox News' latest poll which the "fair and balanced" network is trumpeting as showing that "Twice as many favor more guns over banning guns to reduce crime." When you dig into the weeds, you discover that 52% of the respondents say someone in their household owns a gun (question 46) whereas other polls have found a significantly smaller percentage of the population has been found to have a gun in the house.
Gallup has a tracking poll of gun ownership that found 43% of Americans reported having a gun in their home in late December, 2012, (I could not figure out the sample size). In December, 2011, about 35% in a YouGov survey of 45,000 Americans reported either owning a gun or living with someone else who owned a gun. CNN reported last July that in 2010, 32% of households owned guns.
So how did Fox arrive at 52%? Fox merely notes that the percentage is the highest they ever found and says this about their methodology:
The Fox News Poll is conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R).The poll was conducted by telephone with live interviewers January 15-17, 2013, among a random national sample of 1008 registered voters (RV). Results are of registered voters, unless otherwise noted. Landline and cell phone telephone numbers were randomly selected for inclusion in the survey using a probability proportionate to size method, which means that phone numbers for each state are proportional to the number of voters in each state. Results based on the full sample have a margin of sampling error of ± 3 percentage points. Results from Fox News polls before February 2011 were conducted by Opinion Dynamics Corp.
Fox's political breakdown was 39% Democrats, 34% Republicans and 23% Independent/other. However, Nate Silver, who recently wrote that "about 40 percent of married households reported having a gun in their home, according to the exit poll conducted during the 2008 presidential election," also says that gun ownership is one of the "clearest examples of the partisan polarization in the country over the last two decades." He notes:
Whether someone owns a gun is a more powerful predictor of a person’s political party than her gender, whether she identifies as gay or lesbian, whether she is Hispanic, whether she lives in the South or a number of other demographic characteristics.
So how did Fox come up with a such an outlier number? I don't know the answer and I don't know enough about how polling works to speculate. But I'm going to email Nate Silver to see if he has any thoughts on the subject. I'll report back any response.
“The brothers, along with a friend who was spending the night, had gotten the mother’s handgun, “which at the time had been unloaded,” [Police Sargent] Smith said.
“During the course of the evening and early morning hours, one of the boys had evidently loaded the weapon, Smith said. “The 14-year-old at some point pointed the weapon at his brother and pulled the trigger, which resulted in the 15-year-old being struck in the chest area.””
http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2013/01/20/1474401/teenager-accidentally-kills-brother-while-playing-with-mothers-gun/
He eagerly admits to these Glocks with big magazines. He’s been crowing about them almost every day since Sandy Hook, how he’s got concealed carry permits in five or six states. He wants to add Florida to that list. The very same afternoon that Andrew Cuomo signed NY’s new firearms law, Hannity came on the air in major whine mode: “If I didn’t have to work here, I’d move out of New York immediately!” Maybe to Florida; he mentioned a good pal who owns a gun shop there. (Slanthead doesn’t have to live in New York State — he could move to New Jersey, Connecticut… Why doesn’t he move to North Dakota, and live and broadcast right next to a fracking rig since he loves them so much?)
Other little Hannity gun factoids:
1) He’s been crowing that he was trained at age 11 to be a marksman. Where… at a South Shore dump or landfill, picking off rats with a .22? That’s the norm for white trash punk teens.
2) He has stated flatly that the 2nd Amendment gives everyone the right to own AR-15s and big 30-100 round magazines! Where did Slanthead get this fact? Maybe from his “good buddy,” the "constitutional scholar Mark Levin? (Maybe someday they’ll catch Levin with a big net and give him rabies shots!)
3) Hannity won’t admit to owning assault rifles. He surely misses his armed patrols on the southern border, though he probably didn’t get a chance to fire at little brown people (surely more thrilling that rats at a dump).
4) Who wants to bet that Slatnhead owns an arsenal of assault rifles? He again admitted on the air last week that he needs to protect his family (from those “folks” in Hempstead, probably). So down in his fortified bunker, how many AR-15s does he have? How many RPGs, mortars, grenades, 50-caliber machine guns? What does he keep in the trunk of his armored Escalade? Hey, you never know… one of those Prius owners that he tries to run off the LIE every night on his way home might get mad.
5) And finally, a few days after Sandy Hook, Hannity said he had the complete solution to gun violence in America: simply round up all the homeless people on the street who talk to themselves. (I can’t make this stuff up, people). And to back up his theory, he brought on his favorite mayor, Rudy. Everyone remembers “America’s 911 Mayor!” This is the man who looked “good” for a few minutes only because the Governor at the time (Pataki) and Dubya were cowering somewhere (Rudy would have crawled under a bed also, but he had to walk north from the WTC, and the cameras and mics were turned on.) Rudy knows about roundups. Before the attack on the Twin Towers, he was known mainly for rounding up about 13 (mostly harmless) squeegee men who “worked” the West Side Highway exit at 57th Street. “Mayor rids city of dangerous Squeegee men!!” screamed the tabloid headlines.
… ah… that’s enough. Tomorrow’s another day. I have to be out, so thankfully I won’t get to hear Hannity mock Obama’s speech, insult Michelle, complain about Jesus being AWOL at the inauguration, etc., etc.
Robert, that’s not the least bit surprising to anyone who knows the political character of New York State. As I pointed out to Ellen a few days back, travel to many, many of the communities north of the city and you might think you’re in actually in “pitchfork central” in places like Appalachia.
Yes, there are a few pockets of liberalism — I grew up in Ulster County and Woodstock comes to mind of course — and some of the larger cities aren’t too bad; I also worked for the AP in Albany for a year (actually worked in Troy, lived in Albany).
But the intensity of right wing thought, the hatred for city folks, liberals, Jews, etc., I’m sure is just as strong as it was when I was younger.
Or relocated it to Fox News. Whichever.