Loaded questions.

• Author: Sullum, Jacob

"Do it for our kids." This is the new slogan of the gun-control movement. (See "Gun Play," July.) And according to a poll released last summer, most Americans find it a persuasive argument for a national ban on handguns.

A Lou Harris telephone survey of 1,250 adults commissioned by the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation found that 52 percent of Americans favor a ban on handgun possession, except with special court approval. The New York Times and Nightline trumpeted the poll as marking a significant turnaround in public opinion.

But reporters failed to note that the survey artificially inflated support for a handgun ban with a series of skewed queries and tendentious assertions about how guns threaten children. Before respondents were asked about gun control, they heard 19 questions that mentioned children; of these, 12 mentioned or alluded to violence, and 10 explicitly connected guns to the harming of children, including suicide, homicide, and accidents.

One question asked: "Does it concern you or not that (1) when people's homes are broken into and they own a gun, the intruder might take the gun away from the owner and shoot him or her; (2) a common cause of injury or death among family members, especially children, results from their either cleaning or playing around with a gun; (3) people often forget to put the safety latch on guns around the house, and sometimes leave them loaded, which causes many...