Lying about gun control with statistics

May 22, 6:30 AMCleveland Gun Rights ExaminerDaniel White

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One common tactic by the anti-gun crowd is to claim that gun rights are unpopular and to use their flawed poll results to try to back up that claim.

Recently, several nationally recognized polling agencies have conducted studies proving that gun rights are, in fact, more popular now than they have been in years. Despite this, organizations like the Ohio Coalition Against Gun Violence continue to tout on their website that Ohio's concealed carry law is "unpopular." While they don't state data to support that claim on the site, it does frequently pop up in interviews, when OCAGV director Toby Hoover repeatedly states "the gun lobby knows that carrying hidden loaded handguns is not what Ohioans want. During 2001, the University of Cincinnati took a poll which resulted with 69 percent opposed to concealed weapons in public".

The poll she is referring to was conducted by the University of Cincinnati in 2001 in which 804 Ohioans were asked, “are you in favor of a law making it easier to obtain a permit to carry a concealed handgun, or do you oppose this law?"

It is a well known how easy it is to get the results you are looking for by the way you word your poll questions (I’ll prove this in a minute). By asking participants if they were in favor of a law making it easier to get a permit, they implied that it was already possible to get such a permit. Those participants could easily have believed that the current process for getting a permit was sufficiently easy. The fact of the matter is, there was no process for getting a permit at the time the poll was conducted. Concealed carry passed in Ohio in 2004.

But, let’s not even try to assess what those 804 participants in that flawed poll may have been thinking. Let’s instead look at another poll conducted in 2001, a Buckeye State Poll conducted by The Ohio State University and WBNS-TV. Two of the questions asked in that poll are relevant here.

The first question asked if the participant was in favor of a bill “that would allow most Ohioans to carry concealed weapons.” 65% of those polled stated they would be against such legislation. But wait, there’s more!

The very next question went into more detail when it asked if they were in favor of legislation that involved county sheriffs and would require applicants for a concealed carry permit to “obtain weapons training and be subject to a background check.” This time, 67% were in favor of the legislation. These were the same people answering consecutive questions in the same survey. This proves that the way the question is asked can easily get the wrong result if it isn’t complete in the information presented. Give Ohioans all of the relevant information, and the majority are in favor of concealed carry.

The reason for the lies is that the agenda of the gun grabbers just isn't popular. We've tried restrictive gun bans and heavy regulation of gun rights in this country, and those schemes have failed. Now, people want their rights back. They want to be able to defend themselves and their families from violent criminal attack, whether in their homes, out on the streets, or in public parks. It's not the "gun lobby" that is responsible for all the recent pro-gun victories, it is The People they represent.

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