Household Ownership Of Guns In US Only 34%?

[Old Hippy]

Yeah, most will likely understand the question after a pause but they're not the problem. It seems to me that it'd be the ones who will misunderstand the question who will be ones who adversely affect overall accuracy. If you want your results to be as accurate as possible then the question should be as coherent as possible. Guns or revolvers is far from ideal.

[snip]

Covered on previous page.

nope, only the fact that you keep saying people can be confused by the term 'Guns or revolvers'

so once again would you be confused by someone asking
"do you have any guns or revolvers in your home (or if house,and garage)"

if so, why? I don't understand this confusion

would you be confused by someone asking do you have any cats or dogs in the house

OR

should they say do you have any pets in the house

if you are seriously knocking the polls questions, you should use language that is not confusing the issue

 

[Formaldehyde]

A better question would be whether or not you would completely freak out and reply incorrectly if someone asked "Do you have any pets or dogs in your house or garage" followed up by "What sort of pets do you have"?

 

[Bugfatty300]

nope, only the fact that you keep saying people can be confused by the term 'Guns or revolvers'

From page one of this thread...

 

[Old Hippy]

From page one of this thread...

It really is an odd question. Yeah, looking at it again, it seems the wording would lead the person to believe that the question only pertains to handguns. There actually is a rift on whether or not a revolver is a handgun...

It's not hard to imagine that this could have an effect on results if the question is about firearms in general.

What's wrong with “have in your home (or garage) any firearms

yes you dealt with it by questioning the authenticity of the poll, but you have not really dealt with whether you have any confusion in answering the question

"do you have any guns or revolvers in your home (or if house,and garage)"

if so, why? I don't understand this confusion

because you leave us with the conclusion that IF it is wrong, therfore that the whole poll is wrong, based on your confusion over the question, would one not really have to disreguard your comments on the fact that you do not understand what the question is...

Spoiler :

gun (gn)
n.
1. A weapon consisting of a metal tube from which a projectile is fired at high velocity into a relatively flat trajectory.
2. A cannon with a long barrel and a relatively low angle of fire.
3. A portable firearm, such as a rifle or revolver.
4. A device resembling a firearm or cannon, as in its ability to project something, such as grease, under pressure or at great speed.
5. A discharge of a firearm or cannon as a signal or salute.
6. One, such as a hunter, who carries or uses a gun.
7.
a. A person skilled in the use of a gun.
b. A professional killer: a hired gun.
8. The throttle of an engine, as of an automobile.
v. gunned, gun·ning, guns

because it would be worrying to know that people have firearms in their house, yet are not bright enough to know what a gun can be...

 

[Bugfatty300]

yes you dealt with it by questioning the authenticity of the poll, but you have not really dealt with whether you have any confusion in answering the question.

Yes I did. Strangely enough you deleted it from your quote there.

There is something of a riff in gun owning community about whether or not a revolver is a handgun. If you're a gun owner and interact with other gun owners on fairly regular basis, then you've probably heard of this. You'd know that many consider a handgun and a revolver to be two distinct things.

Technically handgun is not a revolver. If you were formally asking about pistols in general you'd have to separate the two to keep everyone happy.

It's plausible (to me at least) that some, who is familiar with the subject, would hear gun or revolver and think handgun or revolver or pistol or whatever. Which might cause them to answer negatively if they only own rifles and shotguns, etc. Maybe a lot of people misunderstood or maybe nobody misunderstood. I don't know. But there it is none the less. Is the question poorly worded? Yes. Should they have given the wording a little more thought? Yeah. I can say that much.

Now, this distinction is not widely known outside us "gun nuts" so I can see why you were confused by my statement, but you really should have just quoted that post instead of accusing of me repeating something over and over without having first offered some reasoning behind it. Sorry to be obtuse about it.

 

[Old Hippy]

fair enough, nice to be let into the secrete language of the inner circle of 'gun nuts'...

 

[Patroklos]

Most Gallup polls are conducted with a thousand or so respondents. This one involves 48,000 people who are selected so they represent the actual demographics. As indicated in the article, gun ownership is far higher in rural areas than it is in urban ones. It is also far lower in Hispanic households. But it still seems to be a very large disparity.

From your own OP...

The center’s 2012 survey, conducted mostly in person but also by phone, involved interviews with about 2,000 people from March to September and had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

 

[Bugfatty300]

fair enough, nice to be let into the secrete language of the inner circle of 'gun nuts'...

They're not secrets believe me. Call a a revolver a handgun and a lot of them will let you know about it if they hear it. I think it's because a lot of gun owners are veterans and are used to being drilled on the technical jargon.

But, yeah sorry I should have just said all that before but. I figured someone would ask if they wanted me to go into greater detail.

 

[Old Hippy]

They're not secrets believe me. Call a a revolver a handgun and a lot of them will let you know about it if they hear it. I think it's because a lot of gun owners are veterans and are used to being drilled on the technical jargon.

But, yeah sorry I should have just said all that before but. I figured someone would ask if they wanted me to go into greater detail.

I sure did ask, didn't I...
would I be in breach of the technical jargon if I called a revolver a gun and would the veterans be confussed by this...

would one go asfar as to say "veterans are confussed by most poll questions, having been drilled on techical jargon"

 

[Bugfatty300]

Actually scratch all of that. I got pistol and handgun confused.

 

[Patroklos]

It's confusing the other way to though. If you are a non gun nut and probably do consider a revolver a gun you have to ask yourself what they intended by making that specific reference. It is entirely reasonable to assume that sense they specifically mentioned revolvers and it was worded to make an equivalency with whatever "guns" was supposed to be that they were referring to non revolver hand guns.

Which is of course why I want to know the reason for the wording. The unfortunate black eye of having Forma as a fan not withstanding, I doubt these guys are actually stupid and must have had a reason for using this language.

 

[Old Hippy]

if it was not Forma's OP I doubt that it would matter... it still shows American households as having a high rate of gun/revolver/rifle/semiautomatic/handgun/howitzer ownership compared to household gun ownership in the UK/Australia

 

[Bugfatty300]

I assume Forma's issue is that the Gallup poll is being used by pro-gun folks to demonstrate an increase in gun owners over the past couple of years (for propaganda points I assume) even though the Gallup poll shows an overall decline over the past 20 years.

There has been a controversial surge in gun purchases in the past few years. A lot of it is attributed to Obama's gun control stances but if we're going by number of NICS background checks the surges began in 2005-2006 at least a couple of years before Obama was nominated although it's hard to deny he hasn't been a big factor.

Some say it's evidence of people buying guns for the first time. Others say it's gun owners buying up guns because they're afraid that they're going to be banned or restricted. I personally believe it's a mixture of the two.

Even so it's hard to ignore the fact that during all this guns have become more mainstream in American society. I remember that 10 or so years ago there was Tales of the Gun on History Channel and a couple of hunting channels if you ordered them. Now there are programs on just about every basic cable channel that features positive (more or less) portrayals of real life gun owners, guns and shooting. These contrast a lot with the more traditional and violent depictions of guns in drama and Hollywood.

I don't see why the explosion in media exposure to positive gun ownership wouldn't result in some sort of rise in new gun owners. Though I doubt it's the great gun owner renaissance that the activist pro-gunners are making it out to be.

 

[Old Hippy]

well I was just musing that if the OP, had said, rise in number of guns, but Americans feel more secure with a drop in homeowners having guns...
no one would have questioned the poll questions... except maybe, just perhaps, me and Forma

 

[Formaldehyde]

Sigh. And were back to name calling...

So it is now "name calling" to call the NRA "gun nuts" as they obviously are?

Again, do you actually agree with their absurd position of banning violent video games, TV, and movies? Do you backtrack on your past statement that all guns should be registered, unlike the NRA who are so paranoid they think it must eventually lead to a confiscation of all their guns?

Why do you feel so personally offended by properly labeling them?

From your own OP...

But I stated "most Gallup polls", not this one. Now didn't I?

Gallup conducts 1,000 interviews per day, 350 days out of the year, among both landline and cell phones across the U.S. for its health and well-being survey. Though Gallup surveys both landline and cell phones, they conduct only 150 cell phone samples out of 1000, making up 15%.[9] The population of the U.S. that rely only on cell phones (owning no landline connections) make up more than double, at 34%.[10] This fact has been a major criticism in recent times of the reliability Gallup polling, compared to other polls, in its failure to compensate accurately for the quick adoption of 'cell phone only' Americans. [6]

Speaking of the actual topic, does this mean you think that a 90-minute poll of 48,000 individuals carefully selected to match the demographics is quite likely far closer to being representative than a telephone survey which used 24 times less people?

That it makes perfect sense for the number of households which have guns to decline, as there are far fewer hunters now? That there are less people who live in rural areas compared to urban ones? That younger people simply don't own as many guns as those who are older? That few Hispanics own guns?

Or would you rather continue to incessantly discuss me instead?

 

[Bamspeedy]

Where are you getting this 48,000 people from when the OP states 2,000 were interviewed? I see they carefully asked people about their demographics so those people would then represent their demographics, but I don't see where they were specifically chosen because of their demographics.

 

[Patroklos]

But I stated "most Gallup polls", not this one. Now didn't I?

The problem, Admiral General, is the issue isn't with the Gallup numbers but with your OPs numbers.

You invented the 48K out of thin air when your article clearly states 2000.

Speaking of the actual topic, does this mean you think that a 90-minute poll of 48,000 individuals carefully selected to match the demographics is quite likely far closer to being representative than a telephone survey which used 24 times less people?

Who knows, but since ther are no 48K polls up for discussion who care?

That it makes perfect sense for the number of households which have guns to decline, as there are far fewer hunters now? That there are less people who live in rural areas compared to urban ones? That younger people simply don't own as many guns as those who are older? That few Hispanics own guns?

Oh I bet the raw numbers of hunters and gun owners in general are at an all time high, it's the percentages that have dropped.

Where are you getting this 48,000 people from when the OP states 2,000 were interviewed? I see they carefully asked people about their demographics so those people would then represent their demographics, but I don't see where they were specifically chosen because of their demographics.

They weren't, the 48K is make believe.

 

[Disgustipated]

libs just want us to get rid of our guns so we can't overthrow the coming socialist government.

Yes, this is the point when some stupid liberal says you can't go up against a tank with an AR-15. Revolutions happen all the time (Egypt) when going up against superior numbers. And most Americans would not turn guns of tanks against their own countrymen.

 

[Bamspeedy]

They weren't, the 48K is make believe.

I can find a number close to that by following all the links posted in this thread. Problem is, that number is the number of people polled since 1973.

If that is where the number came from....Gallop has polled millions of people over the years.

And while there may be certain demographics more likely to not be 'cell phone only', I think there tends to be certain demographics more likely to sit through a 90 minute polling.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

Do you think a mere change in wording of the question asked could cause such a huge disparity in the two polls?

Easily. And 13% is not huge. Phrasing and polling methods can cause much larger deviations than that routinely.

Margin of error is not a representation of how far the poll might be off, it's merely a statistical indicator determined by nr of people polled vs the entire group.