Shooting The Bull

If you want to lie to a lot of people, using polls is a good option.

I take surveying seriously because I once ran a public polling company (National Pulse, now defunct) and have done large scale polling as a marketing consultant. Let’s just say I know more than most people at Gallup about survey science. I also know from watching political polls that many are poorly constructed and some are designed specifically to mislead voters.

The San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper never accused of being unbiased, had an oddball report that relatively few American guns traced to Mexico came from California and quoting a study reports “Our assumption is that California's [gun control] laws have had a dissuasive effect on traffickers purchasing weapons in the state.”
 

It is time to fail the Brady Campaign Report Card.

One of the most simplistic and inane canards cast by the Bradys (and they seem to be the experts in this narrow field) is their annual report card concerning gun control laws in each state.  Every year Sarah Brady and associated intellectual larceners list gun control laws they like, skew the scoring to put political pressure on target states, then send these scores to their acolytes in order to shame voters in different districts.

Yet there is zero correlation between their scores and crime.