David Hardy, Of Arms and the Law, linked to a bizarre pro-gun control survey conducted by ValuePenguin/Lending Tree.
Hardy noted:
Reminds me of the DMI survey, commissioned by NRA-ILA at its birth. It found that, if you took the respondents who wanted more gun control and asked them what type they wanted, most of them would name measures that were already in federal law.
He’s right. I won’t bother with a complete fisk of the survey, but I will point out this chart of restriction survey respondents allegedly support.
Yep, the top three (by far) restrictions are things currently restricted — heavily — at local, state, and federal levels. I’d like to see the actual questions. Did they ask if respondents want those, or did they ask if they want more of those? We won’t know because 1) there’s no link to the actual survey questions or raw data, and 2) the article has no contact data for the article writer or pollsters. I did find a general contact; I’ll see what response I can get out of it.
This part is interesting.
As mentioned, 75% of Americans favor requiring liability insurance for gun owners. In fact, support for liability insurance on guns is almost as high as support for liability insurance on homes (72%) or cars (84%).
Huh. 75% of Americans favor paying insurance companies more money, to exercise a Constitutionally-protected right. Kinda makes you wonder who they surveyed. I’ll “circle back” to that shortly.
You can see the “75%” (44 and 31) in this graph.
The problem is… go back to the first chart I posted and check the “Proof of gun ownership liability insurance” bar: that one says only 33% want that. Which is it, Lending Tree?
Who did they survey, and how? Since the survey data isn’t available, we’re stuck with this brief explanation of their methodology. The bold is my emphasis.
ValuePenguin commissioned Qualtrics to conduct an online survey of 1,995 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 77 from March 17 to 21, 2023. The survey was administered using a non-probability-based sample, and quotas were used to ensure the sample base represented the overall population. Researchers reviewed all responses for quality control.
Well, I’ll have to give them credit for some honesty. “Nonprobability sample”? They admit it? That’s pretty much a first for pro-gun control polling. (I mean, they do it, most just don’t admit it.)
If you’re confused, nonprobability sampling is…
Probability sampling, or random sampling, is a sampling technique in which the probability of getting any particular sample may be calculated. In cases where external validity is not of critical importance to the study’s goals or purpose, researchers might prefer to use nonprobability sampling. Nonprobability sampling does not meet this criterion. Nonprobability sampling techniques are not intended to be used to infer from the sample to the general population in statistical terms.
In layman-speak: Probabilty sampling is meant to gather — randomly — respondents that you hope will be represenative of the general population. Nonprobability sampling is for when you don’t actually care about the general population. You care about A) presenting a preconceived conclusion, B) only what certain people think, or C) both.
No wonder they didn’t care that their graphs conflict with each other. They were shooting for A) the preordained conclusion that more people want to pay more, and B) probably surveyed insurance company execs and salescritters (gotta keep those sales commissions and bonuses coming).
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Would nonprobability mean the probability of only polling non gun owners?
Or only Dimocrats. Or only insurance salesmen. Or only MDA members.
Whatever you need the survey to say.
I never took a statistics class at the collegiate level. However, I might have mentioned on a few occasions that I am a reader, since I was younger than 10 years old. And I would read anything that I could get my hands on, including high school curriculum books. So I have read a bit on this, and while I struggle to remember most of it, I know enough that I realize that I can design a poll that will give the results that I want no matter how antagonistic the people may be towards my desire.
I remember when my twin brother an myself were about 10 years old, my uncle owned a bar outside of town, on a very nice little lake. At the time, Michigan was attempting to stop the sales of alcohol on Sunday. The way that they did it was to try and make the language confusing. In order to be able to purchase alcohol by the glass on Sunday, you had to vote NO! on the proposal. So my uncle, along with a bunch of tavern owners and restaurant owners through out the smaller towns, passed out flyers on the days leading up to the vote, telling the people that in order to buy booze by the glass on Sunday, you must vote NO! on proposal E or what ever proposal it was. He gave my twin brother and myself I think 10$ each to put those flyers on every windshield in town, under the windshield wiper blades. We went out for about an hour in the morning and then another hour in the afternoon/evening.
The proposal went down in flames, due in part to the people who had come out in a grass roots uprising against the unfair language that the conservatives used at the time to try and force their brand of morals on the rest of the people at the time.
That is just one of the many things that I tucked away in the corner of mind, to remind me that I don’t follow any particular ideology other than that of the Constitution and fairness. Sometimes it seems like the Constitution makes things seem unfair to your or your favorite policy or project that you support and want to spend other people’s money on. But since we do not have a direct Democracy, but rather a complicated type that has been called many things, but I like the one a Democrat Republic. Democratic, because we do have elections, and Republic, because we elect Representatives to act as our sort of proxy to serve in our stead in the Federal Government, to do the things that we want them to do. If they fail to continue to represent those interests back home, we have the right, even the obligation to send them home and elect someone else, who has a philosophy more closely aligned to that of the majority of the people who they are intended to represent. At it’s best, it is the greatest form of government ever invented by humankind, with the opportunity for every single person to have a voice in what happens in Washington D.C.
At it’s worst, sadly the kind of government is no better than so many others, in that entrenched dynasties accumulate power, and learn how amass even greater power, forcing incoming freshmen to either support them, or they find themselves sitting on boards that are responsible for how much fish are allowed to be taken by natives from Alaskan waters each year, which is nearly the same every year. With great luck it will stay the same, and they will have to go to Houston or San Diego for a 2 week seminar every year to learn about the newest method of counting fish using Technolgy, which doesn’t call for any actually attendance at a meeting, just picking up the paperwork, just to prove you were there.
When I see a politician start in with numbers, no matter what they are about, I tune out, because I know that the thumb is on the scale, and they are without fail taken either out of context or out and out lies. Any person over around 40, who never got shackled by the woke movement can design a survey that will prove just about anything that they want to. So they really do not prove a damn thing. Instead, I always look to actions, and what people say in public. Because they cannot hide from what they say in public.