To be quite honest, it is because gun owners do tend to be paranoid. I have friends who are gun owners, and they are good people, but they also tend to be the more likely to assume maliciousness at any slight against them. I have never asked them about taking surveys, mayhap I shall on our next outing (thought that will likely not be till fall).
I will note that you have expressed ideadiation that I consider to be paranoid quite a few times when it comes to being concerned about the govt coming to take your guns. In this very thread, you have pointed out that you do not consider it to be prudent to honestly answer a survey conducted by a legitimate organization. (I perfectly understand not telling random strangers about what kinds of valuables or weapons, or valuable weapons, they could find in your home, but to assume that a polling organization is out for such antics is, IMHO, paranoia, and not a healthy level either.
Like I said previously, I had issues with the methodology of data collection. Self reporting is the least reliable form of polling there is. But, I was willing to give it some credit in that it was some data. But, if you are telling me that enough gun owners are willing to be “prudent with the facts” in a legitimate survey, then I have to wonder how prudent they are being when they decide to self report their interactions with the criminal element.
As would mine, actually. Not that I go that often, a few times a year if I am lucky, but it does seem to be busier than it used to be. I do know that there have been an increase in households that have guns, as some of my friends have gotten guns since the trump election, and I have been strongly considering it myself. (If I didn’t have rotating housemates and a fairly limited budget, I probably would have by now, but it would just be an expensive toy with a high liability at this point.)
If all surveys are unreliable, then surveys of cable usage are unreliable, but I never see a thread about people cutting cable where someone says, “I get cable, but if a pollster asked me I’d lie about it. Most cable subscribers I know would. There’s no upside to answering official questions about cable, and it’s none of their business.” The same goes for other topics.
It undoubtedly is, as HurricaneDitka suggests, wise to regard all self-reporting skeptically. Nevertheless gun owners (at least in this thread) seem unusual in their desire not only to withhold information, but to deceive people. This is apparently based on suspicion and fear of negative outcomes if they don’t lie to researchers. Unusual behaviors driven by suspicions and fears that are (IMO, obviously) unfounded may not be the clinical standard for a diagnosis of paranoia, but it certainly meets the colloquial definition.
Sometimes self reporting surveys are the only information available, so it’s taken, but with a grain of salt.
Unfortunately, the revelations in this thread have told me that anything to do with surveying gun owners needs at least two lumps of salt, as they are self-admittedly unreliable reporters of information.
Groups experiencing and reporting sexual harassment or racism are not self selecting into a group that apparently is proud of itself for misleading the public.
I speak for homo sapiens with my OP comment on the psychological dynamics of using lethal weapon and of witnessing violent actions. Not just for myself.
If you cannot come to terms with this, with your true inner feelings, that’s not a MP.
It’s a YP.
And I’ve had several people tell me they’ve stocked up on guns because they forsee a coming restrictive government legislation.
So I’m gonna go ahead and stand by all my OP bullets on the reasons for gun sales.
How you take all that is, of course, your choice, mate.
So, if I’m hearing you right, I should go out and murder a bunch of people right now, because I clearly want to.
You know what? Sometimes I have the urge to pee, when I’m not in a good place to pee. I resist, despite my animalistic urges, and valiantly try to head for a socially-approved pee-place. Even so, I’m not sure it would be quite valid to take the above facts and, based on my evolutionary psychology, say that I enjoy peeing in public.
For the record, I have never held or shot a gun. This is deliberate, because I actually do believe you - I’m concerned that by abandoning civility and taking into hand a tool of death and murder I might be tempted to actually shoot it. As I do not need to kill things, I think that would be a bad temptation to succumb to.
I think you make several unsupported assumptions:
[ul]
[li]All surveys are not unreliable, some may be more reliable than others based on different fact patterns.[/li][li]Gun owners are not unusual in their desire to withhold information - quite the contrary, it’s typical behavior. [/li][li]The basis for this can be many things, but assuming it is suspicion and fear of negative outcomes isn’t the only thing. It could be a desire for privacy, lack of incentive, or even to troll them (the surveyors).[/li][/ul]
Given that people I personally know have had their guns confiscated (SKS) and the state recently passed a law confiscating my legally owned magazines, I wouldn’t exactly call it paranoia. Healthy evidence based suspicion more like.
In any event, this isn’t a general gun control thread so I’ll leave the rest of it alone. My take on what’s driving sales in no particular order:
[ul]
[li]More interest in the shooting sports by previously underrepresented demographics[/li][li]More interest in self protection given Trump’s election[/li][li]Carryover from increased interest from the Obama administration[/li][li]Greater acceptance given relaxing of some restrictions across states[/li][li]Growing population[/li][/ul]
I have three questions I need you to answer before I go any further in this conversation.
Do you understand the difference between refusing to answer a survey question and giving false information?
Do you have any evidence whatsoever of any other self-selected group or demographic routinely and deliberately giving false information to surveyors?
Why would members of any group that cares about being represented by policy makers in the United States deliberately seek to obfuscate their presence in polls and surveys? I honestly can’t think of any answer that doesn’t boil down to stupidity, ignorance, maliciousness, or paranoia.
I think you’ll find that gun owners LOVE to maximize their presence in anonymous polls and surveys, such as non-scientific polls on the Internet. When someone calls them up on the phone and says something like ‘I’m a paid surveyor with Gallup, and I’d like to know if you have any firearms in your home, garage, or vehicle’ (or something along those lines), I can imagine lots of them are a bit more shy about being forthcoming. There are enough scams and theft rings around these days, that I could understand the caution, and I wouldn’t chalk it up to “stupidity, ignorance, maliciousness, or paranoia”. I’d call it “prudence”. YMMV.
I’ll answer since you asked, but I don’t intend to pursue this further.
[ol]
[li]Yes.[/li][li]The Jedi[/li][li]Because they may value privacy and their position is already winning and has been for many years.[/li][/ol]
Hmm…perhaps if you read my post a bit closer…I was in no way shape or form claiming that it is our natural and inherent disposition to kill other human beings.
Rather, that we have evolved so as to feel an admiration, respect, and sometimes even envy for the strong, alpha, often violent, but usually also safeguarding dominant. This is part of the dynamic that drives our respect and even submission to authority. Or alleged authority. As we saw with the infamous Milgram Experiments.
Much like the lab coated faux doctor in the Milgram tests, seeing violent acts repeatedly set in an entertaining and sexy, stimulating arena, like movies TV and video games, taps our inner attraction to those we seen more powerful or even dangerous than ourselves.
I’ll say it again…indeed, I’ll kick this up a notch…I claim that if our violent movies and video games were eliminated, and the media was forced to alot equal time between violent crime and human interest or other stories, gun sales would be cut in half.
How do you like them apples?
LOL
I do not shy from controversial opinions, especially when I feel I’m more than able to defend them.
Cheers.
And those are reasons to not take surveys. I often times don’t take surveys because I am busy. Not taking a survey is perfectly fine. Lying on it is a different matter.
Your last answer there, where you admit that some number of gun owners lie to surveyors in order to “troll them” is what concerns me. That is not the sort of attitude to be taking when you expect people to trust your judgement with lethal weapons.
Did they have all their guns confiscated, or just ones that were against the law to posses? I assume that the SKS’s in question had the spring loaded bayonets or something, as just a stock SKS isn’t against any gun laws that I am aware of.
So, if the govt comes to your house (which I have no idea how it played out, but I assume it started with a piece o mail or a phone call, rather than jackbooted thugs breaking down the door), and asks for one of your many guns, which you are very well aware that is not in compliance with publically passed and known laws, well I can see why that’s not something that you would enjoy, but assuming that they leave you with the rest of your legal arsenal, I certainly would not think that that would be “confiscation.”
I don’t know that it’s really a gun control topic that we have moved onto, we are talking about the attitudes of gun owners in relation to surveys that indicate the number of firearms in circulation and the number of firearm owners. It may not be the exact topic of the thread, so I am willing to move to another thread if need be, but I do feel that discussing why we cannot get accurate information on what firearms sales actually are, or who is buying them, is perfectly relevant to the question of what is driving those sales in the first place. Anyway, this new piece of data both fascinates and concerns me greatly.
I would mostly agree on 2, as that is why several people I know that used to be fairly anti-gun are now gun owners. This is also the reason that I have started considering purchasing a firearm of my own, rather than just playing with my friend’s for free every now and then.
Then they can just hang up. If it is a scammer, then whatever info they give is not helpful to themselves, either they lie about not having guns, so they are robbed, or they lie about the number of guns they have, so they are a bigger target to be robbed. (Doesn’t matter how many guns you have, you can only use one at a time, and I can bring a few friends).
Maybe this isn’t the thread for this, but this is the first time that I have heard this particular form of paranoia, so I am both baffled and obsessed with understanding the mindset that somehow lying on surveys about guns is going to allow society to accurately shape a guns policy that works with minimal impact on anyone.
Why would lying on a survey about guns be any different than lying on a survey about something else? People are people and a certain amount of “fuck with the telemarketer” is fairly amusing. Sure we can all hang up on them, or not answer the phone, but go on youtube and you can find lots of examples of it. Why would they do that? If someone asks me about my ownership of guns and I respond with, “what is your social security number and mother’s maiden name” that would also be screwing with them, just less subtle.
Sure there’s probably lots of overlapping reasons, but I wouldn’t assume malice without some other evidence.
I believe you live in a more gun friendly state so the attitude may not be as familiar. Here in CA, being a gun owner can be a different experience. Someone at work mentioned going on a hunting trip and the response ranged from shock that a person they know would own a gun to shock that they would eat meat!
Are you saying all but one is okay? The idea that it’s not confiscation if they don’t take 100% is sophistry. If I own something, then a law is passed and I can no longer own it, without compensation, I consider that confiscation. Not 100% confiscation, but confiscation none the less.
Your mistake is that you think the mindset is that lying on surveys about ownership s going to allow society to accurately shape gun policy. My primary driver is privacy. Granted this means that I don’t answer many if any surveys. But I have no problem with and understand why people would deny ownership, just like I did when my kid’s doctor asked.
As a follow up, I thought this article was informative about reasons why people would lie to pollsters:
Yes, it’s from the federalist and an opinion piece, but if you are interested in the mindset it’s a fair start.
I don’t know how good a polling company Zogby is, but here is one question(page 5): “If a national pollster asked you if you owned a firearm, would you determine to tell him or her the truth or would you feel it was none of their business?”
36% said none of their business. Some portion of those people will lie. Fairly common attitude.
Because I am not aware that people routinely lie on surveys about other things. I assume that some people lie, because there are always those who lie, but I would have assumed it was a small minority across the board for all surveys, hence one of the reasons that they have error bars.
You are indicating that gun owners are much more likely to lie on surveys about gun ownership than people in general, lie on other surveys.
Ummm, I fuck with telemarketers and scammers from time to time, but that is because the have a business model that assumes that my time is worth nothing, and that annoys me. I answer the phone dozens of times a day, and often enough it is someone trying to sell me something that I don’t need, or even someone trying to scam me, and to those people, I have not but contempt and disdain for such people. I usually keep it short, but rude to them.
Pollsters, however, are not telemarketers. A quick search did not pick up any youtube videos of people messing with pollsters, though I did find a few amusing ones with the microsoft scam people. Do you actually have a link to people messing with pollsters where they lie to the pollster, then hang up and laugh about how wrong the polls will be? I am not doubting that it ever happens, I just have never heard of it happening, don’t see any examples of it happening, and would never have expected it to happen were it not for the statements that specifically say that gun owners lie to pollsters.
And that would be the same as not answering a survey.
If you answer was N, where N!= the actual number of guns that you own, that would be what we are talking about.
I don’t assume malice either. I assume paranoia, and not a healthy amount of it. And, I see plenty of evidence of it, I mean you say that you don’t want to tell people what guns you have because you are concerned that either it is a scam for them to rob you, or a scam to find out if you have guns to see if you are easy to rob (I actually don’t know which way you go on this one), or that the data will be used by the govt to come and confiscate them. That to me is the textbook definition of paranoia, thinking that people are out to get you.
The number of people who just fuck with surveyors because they enjoy that sort of thing are going o be fairly consistent across all subjects, it is only guns where the self selected group indicates that it will not be truthful in general about the subject of the survey.
Ohio’s probably a slight bit gun friendlier than CA as far as laws, but I don’t know about the people in general. People are pretty polarized on the issue around here, and the either own guns (I don’t know that I know anyone that owns A gun), or they are shocked that people they know own guns.
The AWB was pretty silly, in that it was the only thing that could politically get through, even though it did no good to actually address gun violence. Some of it’s implementation was a bit odd as well.
But yeah, gun confiscation, to me, means that they don’t leave you with any guns. Just as if you have 10 cars, and one of them has been recalled because it explodes if it goes over 50 MPH, if the govt comes and asks you to give up that car, technically, that is confiscation, but it is confiscation of a single specific dangerous object, not a “car confiscation”.
Now, like I said, the AWB was not the best piece of legislation for combating gun violence (they probably relied on surveys to help inform the public policy), but the law declared those particular objects to be dangerous items, and as such, those specific dangerous items were removed from the hands of the public.
To call that gun confiscation is to try to obscure the issue with appeals to emotion, rather than fact.
I don’t think that. I think that people lying on surveys makes shaping a sensible gun policy that much harder for both the leaders to implement, and the public to accept.
I’m not sure that lying to your kid’s doctor is all that great an idea either, but at least that also explains that doctors reporting of guns in the home is also going to be unreliable. But, to be honest, if I didn’t trust my doctor enough to not come and confiscate my guns, then I wouldn’t trust him with the health of my child either. I see absolutely no reason to do that, as the only response they will have is to give you and your child a pamphlet on gun safety that many more irresponsible gun owners than yourself could actually make good use of. You could make good use of it too, as a paper target. I am going to say, hopefully non-insultingly, that IMHO, lying to your kid’s doctor is just about the height of paranoia. (You think that your doctor is out to get you.)
Out of curiosity, did you tell you insurance company about the number of guns you own? If not, you do realize that if they are lost, stolen, or damaged, you will not get replacement value for them. Also, if they are used in a way that leaves you liable, your homeowner’s insurance will not cover that liability, since you did not inform them of it, and as such, will leave you on the hook. If so, why do you trust them to not use your info in nefarious ways?
No. I’m not making any comparisons to other surveys.
But how do you know the rando calling you is a bona fide pollster? Maybe you think they are so you can answer some general vague questions, but because you are uncertain you don’t answer more invasive questions, answer negatively?
Again, you assume paranoia. It’s not. It’s cost/benefit. There is non-zero cost, and there is zero benefit to telling the truth. Granted, the non zero cost is very very small, but still greater than zero.
We’ll have to disagree.
You and I probably differ on what we think is sensible. My side has been making progress for many years so I’m comfortable with the direction things are going.
It’s not paranoia, and there is no thought that they are out to get you. It’s none of their business and their doctoring may be fine otherwise. I could answer, “none of your business” but that’s unnecessarily confrontational. Easier to simply say “no” to the question about guns in the home and move on.
The insurance company did not ask, and I did not tell. Firearms are separately scheduled items for the purposes of personal property so if I did with to have firearms covered over a certain threshold I would need to declare them and pay an additional premium. Your statement about not covering civil liability for actions with firearms not declared is not accurate. I assume you mean civil liability since typically home insurance doesn’t cover criminal liability.
For most of your post, I suppose we will have to agree to disagree on this. I didn’t mean to go on so far, but I was genuinely surprised at the attitude. I consider it paranoia, as it is actually still paranoia when the are out to get you, just justified paranoia. I also disagree that there is a zero cost to misleading the public and its leaders about subjects upon which they are crafting public policy, but YMMV.
Also, as you live in a state that does not have gun policies that you enjoy, and you are concerned about other states that may enact gun policies, I would think that being better informed on the public’s position and ownership of guns would allow them to make more sensible policies that you may enjoy more.
I have never owned a firearm, so I do not know how this works, but you are saying that the insurance company will cover accidental discharges that result in death or injury without them being aware of the presence of those firearms in your home?
When I put in a koi pond, I had to declare that, and my premium went up slightly to cover the possibility of a kid drowning in it. Why would firearms not require a corresponding premium increase?
Things can vary state by state, but that is my understanding. Firearms are considered personal property. That’s not the case with a pool or even a koi pond, though admittedly I haven’t reviewed rules around koi ponds because I do not have one.
The delineation typically arises between accidents and intended actions. From the ABA:
I’m concerned that this is off-topic, but anyway. We’re already on this road. I’ll keep it brief.
There’s a difference between fiction and reality. For me, at least, things do NOT transfer from one to the other. I can happily watch the terminator kill cops all day without ever wanting to kill a cop myself - and without being mad at the movie for portraying cops being killed.
I see succumbing to the attraction of fictional murderousness to be a dangerous mental lapse - a failure to separate fiction and reality in a particularly dangerous way. This does not make me feel particularly safe around gun owners - at least, gun owners without a reason to have a gun. You need to shoot varmints? Fine. It’s your job to have it? Fine. You’ve bought into the lie that they make you safer? Fine. But if you feel that shiver of joy when you cradle your weapon in your hand, get the fuck away from me.
I don’t actually disagree that some gun owners feel a creepy feeling of power and reckless dominance when they hold a weapon intended to kill people. People like that certainly exist. The idea that they comprise half of all gun owners is horrifying.