Poll: Pa. voters want assault weapons banned

[Klem]

From the Citizensvoice:

"Pennsylvania voters overwhelmingly want stricter controls on guns, including background checks on all purchases and bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, according to a new poll released Wednesday..."
the rest can be read here http://m.citizensvoice.com/news/poll...nned-1.1437423

Article mentions at least one other member from here.

I can only imagine the convoluted and confusing questions they asked to get these results.

[Johannes_Paulsen]

I can only imagine the convoluted and confusing questions they asked to get these results.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes...ReleaseID=1836

Questions were pretty straightforward:

13. Do you think the laws covering the sale of guns in the United States should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?

14. Do you think the laws covering the sale of guns in Pennsylvania should be made more strict, less strict, or kept as they are now?

15. Do you support or oppose a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons?

16. Do you support or oppose a nationwide ban on the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines that hold more than 10 bullets?

17. Do you support or oppose requiring background checks for all gun buyers?

18. Do you think that gun ownership in the United States does more to protect people from becoming victims of crime, or does more to put people's safety at risk?

19. Do you think allowing citizens to own assault weapons makes the country safer or more dangerous?

20. Which of these do you think would do more to reduce gun violence in schools, having stricter gun laws or armed guards in schools?

21. If a member of Congress who represents your district were to vote for a ban on the sale of assault weapons, would you be more likely to vote for that person, less likely to vote for that person, or wouldn't it make a difference?

22. Is your opinion of the leadership of the National Rifle Association favorable, unfavorable, or haven't you heard enough about it?

[spartakis252]

Holy made-up-stupid-ass-numbers Batman.

Look further at this tragic waste of time these people conducting the survey are clearly creating biased(racist) propaganda seeing as the way they break down the results. Link to further bullshit.
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/institutes...ReleaseID=1836

5. Do you approve or disapprove of the way Barack Obama is handling his job as President?

Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Wht Blk

Approve 51% 12% 90% 42% 44% 57% 45% 93%
Disapprove 46 86 9 52 53 40 52 6
DK/NA 3 2 1 5 3 3 3 -

WHITE.................................
COLLEGE DEG
Yes No Prot Cath Men Wom

Approve 49% 43% 39% 46% 39% 51%
Disapprove 47 54 58 50 57 46
DK/NA 4 3 3 4 3 3

COLLEGE DEG ANNUAL HSHOLD INC AGE IN YRS.......
Yes No <50K 50-100 >100K 18-34 35-54 55+

Approve 53% 50% 55% 48% 45% 52% 46% 55%
Disapprove 44 47 43 50 51 44 51 42
DK/NA 3 3 2 3 3 3 3 2

(the numbers didn't quite like up right with the break down from my copy and paste)

I'll bet if I go into a retirement center and asked if people over 65 should get more benefits, I could get similar results.

[PocketProtector]

It's Quinnpiniac....Gun controller Leftists from the FAR FAR left......Total BS. again a poll to shape Public Opinion

The FULL court press is on....."by any means"

[Johannes_Paulsen]

It's Quinnpiniac....Gun controller Leftists from the FAR FAR left......Total BS. again a poll to shape Public Opinion

I don't doubt that some people at Quinnipiac might have an anti-RKBA agenda. But do you have any actual evidence that their poll is a fraud, or is this just wishful thinking on your part?

(The question is not rhetorical -- if you have something, let's hear it.)

[Klem]

Guess I didn't dig far enough to find the questions asked. I agree that the questions you, Johannes, found were fairly straight forward. I was just remembering back to the run up to the recent elections and imagined them asking something like "do you strongly support, not so strongly support...not not not banning evil assault weapons". Thats the kind of question I have gotten during election time polls. I also love when they read a statement and ask if you have a favorable opinion of the subject of the question even when the statement is strongly negative.

[KamikazeKnifer]

I don't doubt that some people at Quinnipiac might have an anti-RKBA agenda. But do you have any actual evidence that their poll is a fraud, or is this just wishful thinking on your part?

(The question is not rhetorical -- if you have something, let's hear it.)

There's no mention of their sampling strategy, for one, which always makes me skeptical. For all we know, it was a convenience sample of the first people to respond, or their response rate was 27%, or it was stratified by population density, which would account for greater selection from Philly and Pittsburgh. And we all know that Philly and Pittsburgh sway everything in the state, sort of like how NYC controls the entirety of New York.

[rgkitchen]

I bet that if they had a poll asking if you think it would be a good idea to have extra security checks on Muslims at airports, or a poll asking if it would be OK for the police to go door to door rounding up gang bangers, or a poll asking if you would like all bank presidents to be put in stocks in the town square, or a poll asking if you would like to have talk radio banned, or a poll asking if it would be OK for the government to assassinate suspected terrorists in this country, you would get a majority to say “yes”.

The United States of America is NOT a democracy for a reason. The majority will always vote to subjugate the minority. We have a Constitution to protect all citizens from the whims of popular opinion or the desires of the government to control us. Popular opinion polls in matters of Constitutionality are not only irrelevant, they are disingenuous, and illustrate the woeful lack of education or the outright ignorance of the populous.

[Johannes_Paulsen]

Guess I didn't dig far enough to find the questions asked. I agree that the questions you, Johannes, found were fairly straight forward. I was just remembering back to the run up to the recent elections and imagined them asking something like "do you strongly support, not so strongly support...not not not banning evil assault weapons". Thats the kind of question I have gotten during election time polls. I also love when they read a statement and ask if you have a favorable opinion of the subject of the question even when the statement is strongly negative.

I don't like these results one bit. I was hoping that the questions sounded more like a push-poll, too. The bright spot is that only 3% of those polled say that gun control is the most important problem facing Pennsylvania today.

Granted, this is only one poll, from one pollster, and it was taken January 22 - 27. Still, we should take this as a wakeup call, if you think what happened in NY can't happen here.....

It didn't show the age breakdown, but here were some demographic info from the Q-pac website:

PARTY IDENTIFICATION - Generally speaking, do you consider yourself a Republican,
a Democrat, an Independent, or what?

REGISTERED VOTERS
Weighted
Percent
PARTY IDENTIFICATION
Republican 30%
Democrat 39
Independent 25
Other/DK/NA 6


RACE
White 81%
Black 10
Hispanic 4
Other/DK/NA 5

REGISTERED VOTERS...................................
Tot Rep Dem Ind Men Wom Wht Blk
Weighted Percentage 100% 30% 39% 25% 48% 52% 81% 10%
MoE (+/-%) 2.80 4.97 4.56 5.61 3.84 4.11 3.02 11.03

COLLEGE DEG ANNUAL HSHOLD INC AGE IN YRS.......
Yes No <50K 50-100 >100K 18-34 35-54 55+
Weighted Percentage 30% 69% 43% 28% 16% 20% 33% 43%
MoE (+/-%) 4.12 3.84 4.52 5.26 6.42 8.91 5.35 3.67

Alghny Philly NthEst SthEst NthWst SthWst Cntrl
Weighted Percentage 10% 12% 12% 21% 8% 9% 28%
MoE (+/-%) 8.47 9.06 8.20 6.50 9.14 8.73 5.17

Not all of the polling results were negative (Q-pac just didn't emphasize these in their press release....I will assume that this was because these weren't as decisive as the other results.)

18. Do you think that gun ownership in the United States does more to protect people from becoming victims of crime, or does more to put people's safety at risk?

Protects People: 49%
Puts People at risk: 40%
DK/NA: 11%


20. Which of these do you think would do more to reduce gun violence in schools, having stricter gun laws or armed guards in schools?

Stricter: 42%
Armed Guards: 46%
DK/NA: 12%

Margin of error = +/- 2.8%

[MikeB0]

Hey even I support a true assault weapons ban. The lifting of the one enacted in 1986 would greatly devalue my investments in the ACC556, Thompson SMG, Uzi SMG and AR15 FA conversion that I legally own. Of course I could probably easily be talked into dropping my support if I could get some new and less expensive FA range toys.

I'm fairly confident from talking to the average person that most of the people they asked don't have a solid definition of what they are calling an "Assault Weapon". I'd bet most think they are talking about FA stuff.

These questions would be better be asked as "Do you support a Ban on semi-automatic firearms that are functionally the same as traditional hunting arms, but that normally shoot lower powered rounds than are normally used in traditional hunting firearms?" - I bet they'd get a completely different result and the question would be more fair as the definition of so called "Assault Weapons" would be included in the question.