GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS, UNBELIEVABLE NEWS
by James W. Harris

New Survey: 79% of Americans Believe "The Right to Own Firearms"
is "Essential" or Important"

And now, as Paul Harvey would say... the rest of the story.

Last issue we reported on the newly-released annual "State of the
First Amendment" survey by the First Amendment Center, a non-profit
educational organization that works to preserve and protect First Amendment
freedoms through information and education.  (Posted about this over in the
10TH_AMD echo...  --RJT)

As we reported, the survey found a disturbing lack of support among many
Americans for fundamental First Amendment rights.

But another part of the survey escaped us -- and, apparently, the rest of
the media as well.

During the survey -- which focused almost exclusively on First Amendment
issues -- those polled were also asked a question about the right to keep
and bear arms (protected by the Second Amendment).

The answers showed a very strong support for that right. Furthermore, that
support has *hugely increased* over the five years since the question was
first asked.

The section that deals with the Second Amendment begins:

"The U.S. Constitution protects certain rights, but not everyone
considers each right important. I am going to read you some rights
guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. For each, please tell me how important
it is that you have that right..."

That was followed by several questions. Question number 8 asked how
important is "...the right to own firearms?"

Here are the responses (from both 1997 and 2002):

                         1997      2002

   Essential:             33%       48%

   Important:             31%       31%

   Not important:         33%       20%

   Don't know / refused:   3%        2%

In short, a whopping 79% of Americans responded that "the right to own
firearms" is either "essential" or "important."

The major parts of the survey dealing with the First Amendment were widely
covered by the mainstream media. However, this dramatic response to the
Second Amendment question (which, admittedly, was not a focus of the
survey), seemingly went unreported.

According to Eugene Volokh, UCLA School of Law professor, writing on
September 10 (more than a month after the survey was released): "...to
my knowledge not one media outlet has reported on the right-to-bear-arms
findings. I did a LEXIS
NEWS;CURNWS search...and didn't find a single story that reported on this
survey."

Of course, it's quite possible someone reported on it, somewhere, and Prof.
Volekh missed it. Or...perhaps some facts are just too inconvenient to
report?

(Sources: The First Amendment Center's survey questions and methodology,
along with commentary and analysis [note: the "right to own
firearms" question begins on pg. 22] can be found at:
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.asp?documentID=16839 ;

(Thanks to Liberator Online reader Jeff Chan for forwarding us comments by
Prof. Volokh about this overlooked aspect of the survey. Volokh's comments
are at his blog site: http://volokh.blogspot.com .)

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