The recent release of yet another “gun policy survey” underscores the necessity of not taking gun-related “polls,” “research,” and “studies” at face value. The effort is the 2025 National Survey on Gun Policy, conducted by the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Unsurprisingly, for a firearm prohibition advocacy organization, the poll’s results suggest Americans support targeting lawful gun owners, rather than predatory criminals, as the solution to “gun violence.” We don’t buy it, and neither should you.
NRA-ILA has often reported on the cautionary tale of gun-related surveys and studies. Occasionally, there are meritorious efforts to gather important data on complex topics by professionals or organizations that do not have an obvious stake in the outcome. But when funded and promoted by politicians, activists, and egomaniacs like Michael Bloomberg, you can be assured the backer of a study or poll will get exactly what he pays for.
A timely dissection of the who, why, how, and what of this latest survey is helpful in understanding, and debunking, the headlines and lopsided outcomes from this “survey” being echoed by the anti-gun media.
The Who: In 2022, Michael Bloomberg funded the Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions in partnership with Johns Hopkins University. Bloomberg is well known as the financial backer behind the nation’s largest gun control efforts and organizations. In addition to funding gun control groups like Moms Demand Action, Everytown for Gun Safety, and Mayors Against Illegal Guns, he also props up The Trace, an anti-gun propaganda mill masquerading as a media outlet.
The Why: Manufacturing supportive “research” or “science” to give gun control groups an appearance of credibility is a critical tactic when common sense and basic facts contradict their messaging and goals. This type of advocacy research is an attempt to substantiate gun control narratives and policy with what seems like science in hopes the general public doesn’t notice the fine print or dig too deep into the methods of their pre-determined outcomes.
The How: Every two years since 2013, this National Survey of Gun Policy is conducted, starting with a lopsided polling sample. This year, the survey included twice as many non-gunowners: “2,977 respondents including 1,001-gun owners and 1,976 non-gun owners. The breakdown by political party affiliation of survey respondents was 959 Republicans and 1,419 Democrats.”
One of the most critical hallmarks of a survey is how a question is presented to the respondents, as that can profoundly affect the response. Phrasing, structure, and context of questions are critical as they can easily introduce various types of bias or lean on issue confusion or ambiguity to manipulate outcomes. For such a wide-sweeping survey, nowhere in the posted results does the Bloomberg poll disclose the actual questions asked of the participants. Sampling bias and manipulative questions do not reveal the truth; they reveal what their authors want people to believe.
The What: The Gun Policy Survey addresses various gun control topics of the day such as constitutional carry, red flag laws, permit-to-purchase schemes, and mandatory storage laws, among others. In every instance of the survey topic, it is reported that roughly 70-80% of respondents are in favor of the surveyed gun control policy. For example, upwards of 77% of respondents support red flag laws, or what the Bloomberg effort calls “a civil order with due process protections that temporarily restricts firearm access for an individual who is behaving dangerously or presents a high risk of harm to self or others.” In fact, current state red flag laws lack adequate due process protections, and many allow for firearms seizures based on ex parte accusations untested by an adversarial hearing. Very simply, misleading statements and questions lead to misleading results.
Additionally, many of these outcomes are directly contrary to the expressed opinions of American voters. According to the survey, only 36% of Republicans and only 37% of gun owners support permitless carry. Meanwhile, in the real world, residents of 29 states now enjoy that right. If the poll response were true, this would seem to be a political impossibility. The same survey administered in 2018 claimed that upwards of 87% of gun owners supported “universal” background checks, but actual referenda putting this question to voters never achieved support anywhere close to that. Conveniently, the Bloomberg poll has stopped asking about this topic in recent surveys.
Clearly, this effort is merely political advocacy cloaked in research terms conducted by gun control advocates. To declare that this survey represents “wide support for gun violence prevention policies across political lines and among both gun owners and non-owners” is disingenuous and unconvincing. Note, moreover, these results conflict with yet another recent poll, this one by the arguably more neutral Reuters/Ipsos, that reveals Republicans – who generally oppose gun control and support strict enforcement of existing laws – enjoy majority support on the questions of gun control and crime policy.
Make no mistake: In decades of these types of “research” efforts, the goal is not about finding evidence-based solutions to reduce violence or combat criminal activity. It cannot be when dubious research plus dubious polling equals zero solutions in keeping Americans safer.
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