| . http://volokh.blogspot.com/2002_06_02_volokh_archive.html#85145352 |
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ZOGBY POLL ON VOTERS' ATTITUDES ABOUT THE
RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS: I just got an e-mail from someone at Zogby -- a
reputable polling firm -- about their recent poll (funded by the Second
Amendment Foundation) on the right to bear arms. According to the press
release,
A wide majority of American voters (75%) agree with the Justice Department?s position that the Second Amendment guarantees the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. Just over a fifth (22%) disagree with the Justice Department, while 4% are unsure. . . .I have e-mailed Zogby to ask for more details, and especially the wording of the question; that's obviously very important, and I'll report on that as soon as I hear the answer. Now naturally public opinion doesn't dispose of the legal question; constitutional meaning can't be decided by Zogby Poll. And I realize that public opinion on these matters is often quite sensitive not just to the way the question is phrased, but also to what has been in the news recently. Perhaps the results would have been different right after, say, the Columbine shootings, or they might change if a popular Administration prominently switches back to a states'-rights position. But I do think that this survey puts in proper perspective claims that the Administration's Second Amendment views are somehow "radical", extremist, or otherwise out-of-touch. Calling your opponents radical or extremist (something that both the Left and the Right do too often) is usually an attempt to shift the debate away from the merits and towards a supposedly objective claim about popular opinion: I don't need to get into a tough debate about whether Judge X or Attorney General Y is right, because I can just point to the objective fact that he's Out Of Step With The People. Except that here the Bush Administration seems to be very much in agreement with the people. UPDATE: The Zogby people very promptly responded to my request for the text of the question; it was "Do you agree or disagree with the current Justice Department's position that the Second Amendment guarantees you the individual right to keep and bear arms?" I'm not a polling specialist, but I suspect that this question would have yielded a lower pro-individual-rights position if it had just asked "Do you believe that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms, or a right that's limited only to the National Guard?," or something like that. Mentioning the views of a fairly authoritative institution like the Justice Department, and explicitly mentioning only one side's position, may temporarily shift to the individual rights side some people who are not very familiar with the debate. Still, any possible phrasing might have some flaws (is "limited only to the National Guard" the right phrasing of the states' rights view? would "limited only to state militias" be better, or would it just be confusing, given that "militia" means different things to different people?), and referring to the Justice Department's views does help test whether people really see the Justice Department's position as radical. I'd love to see the results of surveys done with other questions -- if, say, the Ban Handguns Now people at the Violence Policy Center commissioned a reputable survey outfit to do a similar survey with their preferred wording, this would provide a great perspective both on the gun debate and on surveys. But for now, the Zogby survey at least makes clear that the supposedly "radical" Justice Department view is at least well within the mainstream of public opinion. |