The Times has a survey, but so does Gallup

The New York Times touts a survey today that claims homes in America with a gun have declined to 35 percent, down from 50 percent 40 years ago.

I'm skeptical.

The survey was done by the University of Chicago (based in a city with a strong anti-gun political agenda), paid for by the National Science Foundation (a government entity), and analysis presented  in the Times article was done by Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy Research, an organisation that receives funding from anti-gun groups like the Joyce Foundation. The Johns Hopkins Center operates under the auspices of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Is anything named Bloomberg ever pro-gun?

But the biggest reason I'm skeptical of the survey in the Sunday Times is that it flies in the face of a 2011 survey by Gallup that showed American households with guns had risen to 47 percent, the highest recorded level since 1993.

Gallup has done its gun ownership polling on a regular basis since 1991, and Gallup isn't sponsored by or using organisations with a built-in anti-gun bias or agenda to gather or analyze its data.

From Gallup, October 2011