How to read right wing: Skewing the gun debate

I received this press release the other day from something called “The Political Media Report.”

Obama shuts down and ignores the
“Arm the Teachers” White House petition

Washington, DC-On December 14, in response to the Newtown massacre, Larry Ward, president of Political Media, Inc. created a WhiteHouse.gov petition calling to “Arm the Teachers and Principals” to protect themselves and their students from future attacks.

Since then, the petition has generated a great deal of attention in the media and across the country, garnering 9,399 signatures in a matter of days.

Breitbart.com reported this week that based on a recent Gallup poll, more people favored “arming at least one school official” over “banning the sale of semi-automatic weapons” by 64% to 63%.

Despite evident widespread support for the idea to “Arm the Teachers,” the White House has closed the petition and offered a canned response with no reference to the “Arm the Teachers” solution.

“It is time for the President and the media to stop pretending that the only debate in the country is how much gun control we should enact. There are other arguments with tremendous support across the country that needs to be heard: ‘Arm the Teachers, Arm the Principals to defend our children,’ and ‘Eliminate gun free school zones that leave children and teachers defenseless.'”

According to the White House Petitions Terms of Participation “The White House will respond to petitions submitted through We the People that comply with these Terms of Participation and reach the second signature threshold listed below. Petitions on We the People must meet the first signature threshold in order to be publicly searchable on WhiteHouse.gov. Petitions that do not meet these signature thresholds will be removed from the site after the time limit has expired. The White House may elect to respond to petitions at any time, including those that have not crossed the first or second threshold.”

“It is clear that the ‘Arm the Teachers’ petition met the “Terms of Participation” and yet was ignored by the White House.” Larry Ward said. “The President owes We the People and specifically the petition signers a response to the specific ‘Arm the Teachers’ petition.”

The White House Press Office has yet to offer comment on the matter.

If the release is to be believed — and it shouldn’t, but more on this in a moment — there is a national consensus growing on the issue of arming teachers. Nearly two-thirds of the alleged poll’s respondents seem to back armed teachers and a ban on assault rifles.

But go to Bretibart.com — an arch-conservative news site that supports the most extreme form of gun rights — and what you find is a story that transforms a rather ambivalent poll into one that preaches a level of certainty. Breitbart reports that

a majority of 53% of Americans expressed their support for doing exactly what the NRA’s proposing – increasing police presence at schools.

Only 42% support an assault weapons ban.

Note the subtle shift. The Gallup Poll found that 53 percent believed “increased police presence” in schools, which is rather amorphous and unspecific proposal, would be extremely effective. That is not the same as the NRA plan to install an armed guard at every single school in America, which 34 percent thought would be extremely effective.

While the numbers in both the Breitbart report and the press release are accurate, they do not accurately portray what the poll shows. The poll asked about potential effectiveness and not about favored approaches. These conflations are important because they allow conservatives to falsely demonstrate support for a position that lacks support and a unanimity of public opinion where there is none.

The reality is that the gun issue elicits a wide range of responses, as this post from The Washington Post’s Wonk Blog points out. Wonk Blog’s John Sides writes that simplistic notions of gun rights break down under close review:

Consider first the standard survey question asking whether gun laws should be more strict, less strict, or unchanged.  A majority, 54 percent, of those who did not own a gun or belong to the NRA said “more strict.”  Interestingly, so did the plurality of those who did not own a gun but lived with a gun owner (40 percent).  But while most NRA members (54 percent) wanted to make gun laws less strict, only 25 percent of gun owners who were not NRA members felt this way.  The plurality of them (45 percent) wanted no change; 25 percent even supported stricter laws.

Of course, simply asking about gun laws in the abstract conceals varying opinions about specific gun laws.  YouGov also measured opinions about eight such measures in its 2012 polls.  The graph below (click to enlarge) shows support for each measure in these 4 groups.  The graphs are ordered by the overall popularity of these measures, with the most popular at the top.

Some measures attracted nearly universal support (keeping guns from the mentally ill) or opposition (banning the sale of handguns).  Requiring a five-day waiting period was also very popular.  Even half of NRA members supported that.

For the rest of these items, opinions were more mixed, but with a consistent pattern.  First, and unsurprisingly, people who did not own guns or belong to the NRA were most supportive of these measures, and gun owners who were NRA members were the least supportive.  Less than 20 percent, and often less than 10 percent, of NRA members supported these measures.

Second, people who had a gun in their house, but were not gun owners or NRA members, had opinions very similar to people who did not own guns.  This may reflect the prevalence of women in this group, since women are more likely to support gun control than men.

Third, gun owners who were not NRA members were more supportive of gun control than guns owners who were NRA members.  Forty percent of non-NRA gun owners supported a national gun registry.  Forty percent supported a ban on the sale of magazines with more than 10 rounds.  Thirty-six percent supported a ban on semi-automatic weapons—a striking figure given that almost every gun sold today is semi-automatic and gun owners would be likely to know that.
To be sure, this means that the majority of gun owners—regardless of whether they belonged to the NRA—opposed many forms of gun control.  But on the other hand, this list of gun laws did not include some popular proposals.  For example, gun owners, regardless of NRA membership, appear to support criminal background checks.

The debate, post Newtown, Conn., has produced far more fire than heat. There is a definite need for more regulation of guns in the United States — which should include background checks, education and testing, licensing and registration, periodic inspections for safety, required insurance coverage, and more concerted tracking of guns as they are sold. We have to acknowledge, as well, that the second amendment has a mixed history tied to the right of the people to rebel, not to defend themselves from criminals but from a corrupt government; at the same time, we need to be realistic — an armed citizenry will be no match for a government with tanks, assault helicopters and unmanned drones.

Guns are not benign. They were created specifically to destroy — to take the lives of animals and humans. Their very lethal nature should inform our discussions of how to manage them and how we can best prevent the kind of massive public tragedies like Newtown and the smaller ones — the street violence and accidental shootings — that befall us every single day.

Author: hankkalet

Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie. View all posts by hankkalet