Positions and erroneous assumptions

In recent months, particularly since the events in Newton Connecticut, we've been treated to the a rare glimpse at just how dense the news media can be.

I don't mean to particularly focus on the entire gun control issue, but it does bring it into sharp focus as the national media is simply incapable of reporting the story straight.  It can't even grasp how to do it.

This is particularly evident concerning the recent bill to expand background checks for firearms purchases. The current system basically requires any new firearms to be registered by the manufacturer (yes, registered) who then ships the arm to a registered Federal Firearms Dealer (yes registered) who sells it to the purchaser only after running the buyer through a Federal background check and then, registering it (yes, registering it yet again) in his logs.  Most Americans don't even realize that firearms are triple registered to start with, with the registrations being held by the vendors and manufacturers, unless they go out of business, in which case they give the registry to the Federal government.  Registration is registration, however, and the registration exists so that the authorities can rapidly trace a firearm's history if they have a need to.

The bill on expanding background checks proposed to require the background check, and I suspect the registration, to apply to post dealer transfers, i.e., transfers between individuals. A person can debate this one way or another, but quite simply this is not a very popular idea in a lot of the country.  I know that the Press reports that 80% of Americans support this, but I doubt it's anywhere near that high, and probably something like 80% of Americans in rural areas oppose it.  I also suspect that a lot of those folks just don't get polled.  Moreover, the report that "80% support" is actually probably largely erroneous, as it doesn't get to the nature of what "support" really means.

In the reporting on this, it's constantly reported as simply amazing that Congress would not pass the background proposal and that this is evidence of a failed Congress as it isn't doing what the people "support.".  It isn't evidence of any such thing, however, at least on the level that's being reported..  It's evidence that Senators and Congressmen are actually listening to their constituency on this issue, however, and that they have an instinctive, and perhaps actual, understanding of what "support" really amounts to.

This isn't to say that Congress listens everywhere and does exactly what the people want at any one instance.  It clearly doesn't.  A large percentage of Americans have been unhappy with liberal immigration laws for a long time, and have been unhappy with funding of what are private entities, such as Planned Parenthood.  Nothing is done about this, as the organizations don't exist to address it in some cases or there are two well funded opposing organizations debating what should be done in others.  That does mean that Congress listens to people where they are organized, but is that different from some era in the past?  Not hardly.  Veterans benefits remained stout in the 19th Century due to the Grand Army of the Republic, the Union soldiers organization..  Labor laws in the US are really a product of strong unions, which came in during the late 19th Century and remained strong for a century.

That gets to the nature of "support" and why outraged reports of Congress "ignoring" the supposed will of the people on such matters are incorrect.  Indeed, what reporting there is on this topic that cites facts actually demonstrates quite the opposite.

To start with, there's the nature of support and pressure.  What the Press really picks up on, in regards to this story, it the supposed influence of the National Rifle Association.  To listen to the Press, the NRA can tell Congress what to do, and Congress does it.

Supposing that has any validity in fact, why would that be true. Well, because the NRA has real support. That would shock and horrify the opponents of the NRA, but it's quite true. That explains the difference between "opinion" and "support".  

Support actually means, in real terms, that people are sufficiently motivated behind a conviction so as to act on it.  That's a lot different from holding an opinion.  Organizations such as the NRA are influential as a sufficient number of people holding a certain opinion have their convictions behind it, have organized, and will act.  It's not just the NRA by any means, nor is it limited to this era alone.  But that makes a huge difference in terms of active reporting and the real world.  The Press, once again, likes to suggest that a lot of NRA members disagree with any one policy of the NRA, and perhaps they do, but by the same token a lot of Union members might disagree with anyone policy of their unions.  To dwell on that misses the point.  What the organizations themselves mean is that a certain percentage of the population is so motivated by their opinions that they're willing to enlist behind them as a cause.

In contrast to that, there's opinion.  At any one time a majority of the population has an opinion on any one issue. But those opinions tend to be fluid, are often impacted by very recent events, and are often held in a lukewarm fashion.  Indeed, the same people who hold an opinion on one issue today, might hold the opposite opinion tomorrow, with neither opinion being held particularly dear.

This is not to suggest that most people's opinions are invalid, far from it. But, rather, almost everyone holds opinions that they do not regard as particularly important or which, even if held, aren't of a deeply held nature.  Even people who hold deeply held opinions, i.e., nearly everyone, doesn't hold a deeply held opinion on everything.

So, when we look at the recent gun control bill again, what we generally have is that most Americans have relatively strong support for the 2nd Amendment, and have relatively high opposition to controls on ownership of any one particular thing.  Some of those people have very deeply held convictions, and have organized, with those holding deeply held convictions in favor of 2nd Amendment issues clearly outnumbering those who hold the opposite view.  Those who hold the opposite view, however, are strongly urban in nature and the Press, also strongly urban in nature, listens to them, even if Congress, which is everywhere, does not.  Beyond that, the majority of Americans do not have a really deeply held conviction on any one topic within this topic.  Therefore, it's not surprising that not only did the legislation not pass, but people are generally not up in arms about it either.

That, however, doesn't make for a failure in Congress.  Rather, it means they're actually doing what they're supposed to, at least in this area.

Indeed, when Congress, or the Courts, acts upon a supposed "the majority of the American people think" type of analysis when it hasn't thought things completely out, it tends to blow up in their face.  This happened in regards to gun control in the 1990s.  It also basically happened with the anti sedition laws of the late teens, which were later regarded as abdominal.  That has also been the case, in terms of the Courts, in regards to abortion, which the Court may have thought was something that it was only slightly in advance of society on, but in which it wasn't, giving the country forty years of debate with no legislative forum to conduct it in.

Indeed, shallow "opinion" can be notoriously fickle.  In 2011 the overwhelming majority of Americans were all in favor of war with Iraq and a war in Afghanistan as well. A fair amount of the press was too.  All was well until the war in Iraq changed into a Guillaume war and it appeared likely to drag on, at which time many of the very same people, everywhere, were of the opinion that they were against the war, and that they always had been.  Even magazines like the New Republic that had been screaming for war prior to the war with Iraq, grew rather quiet.  Now, with the war in Iraq over, we're hearing cries for intervention in the civil war in Syria.  Those who think that public opinion may be shifting in favor of that can rest assured that if that effort were to drag on, and it would, the public would be demanding to get out.

This also says something about the nature of polls.  We hear citations to polls constantly, but what is often missed about polls is that people lie to pollsters.   People don't like to appear a certain way to people they don't know well, for one thing, so they'll venture an opinion even if they only barely hold it.  And they'll make their opinion stronger in the poll than it really is.  Often people only volunteer their real feelings to somebody they know very closely, so they will also flat out lie to pollsters.  Somebody being polled in, let's say, Detroit may feel that, with the family listening in, in the back room, they need to say that their for gun control, but in their minds they're not in Detroit, but the UP, trapping, hunting and fishing for a living. So when it comes to their actual view, it's something else.  Indeed, if you think about it, it's extraordinarily rare for somebody to pipe up with a minority opinion in a group of people discussing any one topic.

All of this is not to say that public opinion is of no value.  It is. And at the end of the day, or decade, or decades, public opinion will rule. But, rather, those who report on what public opinion is, don't seem to understand the subtleties of it.