The Huffington Post claims it is time to “reevaluate” gun control language

  Last week Pew Research released a poll which showed that for the first time in 20 years more Americans feel it is more important to protect gun rights than it is to pass more gun control legislation.

  It goes without saying, but I will say it anyway, that this has the left upset for it seems as if they are losing the gun control argument despite the fact they have tried to politicize every story they can in order to gain support for their attack on the second amendment.

  This story by the Huffington Post is the perfect example, here is more:

You may have read or heard about a new Pew Research report showing that for the first time, a majority of Americans prioritize gun rights over gun control. It would be hard to miss; the report has been getting a lot of attention.

The report’s key finding was driven by this question:

“What do you think is more important — to protect the right of Americans to own guns or to control gun ownership?”

For decades, this question has been used by reputable pollsters like Pew to gauge the public’s priorities for gun policy. According to Pew, the number of voters who prioritize gun rights has reached a historical high while the number who prioritize gun control has dipped.

  But have no fear, the Huffington Post has a solution for this “problem.”

Here’s the problem: this decades-old polling question, which asks voters to prioritize gun rights or gun control, misrepresents what is at stake in the gun policy debate.

I don’t think this is intentional. You may have heard the phrase “it’s not what you say, it’s what they hear.” The phrase was made famous by Frank Luntz and the idea is that language nuances can make a huge difference in the way people make decisions about their positions on issues. This applies to gun policy as well.

After seeing dozens of head scratching polls and focus groups, I conclude that when many voters hear “gun control,” they interpret the phrase as the opposite of the right to own guns, the idea that Americans can’t be trusted to own guns.

This shouldn’t be a surprise. Gun rights groups have been hammering voters with this “gun grabbers” message for years. Yet, the media (and pollsters) are also unwittingly reinforcing that message every time they frame gun policy as a debate between gun rights and “gun control.”

After all, if one side wants the freedom to own guns, doesn’t it logically follow that their opponents want the opposite? Even the word “control” seems to clash with the American values of freedom and liberty.

The “gun control or gun rights” question dates back decades and I understand the need for consistent question wording to track changes in opinion over time. But it is time to seriously reevaluate whether we are accurately capturing voters’ preferences when we ask them to pick between a deeply held value like “the right to own guns” and something as loaded as “controlling gun ownership.”

  In other words the Huffington Post wants to change the language used in these polls in order to shape public opinion to suit their radical agenda because, as I have written many times, he who controls the message control the masses.

  The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect…