The Mysterious Gun Study That’s Advancing Gun Rights

from The New York Times I'm Rachel. Abrams this is the. [Music]. daily on the previous episode of the. show we talked to a lawyer coming up. with creative arguments to get around. laws favoring gun. rights today my colleague Mike McIntyre. on the mysterious study helping to. strengthen gun rights around the country. and the person behind that study. [Applause].

[Applause]. it's Thursday June. [Music]. 20th so Mike welcome to the show tell me. how did you first get started with this. reporting so I've been covering gun. issues for quite some time and since the. Supreme Court decision in. 2022 in a case called New York State. Rifle and Pistol Association versus.

Bruin that really changed the landscape. of firearms litigation in the country it. was a probably the most consequential. Supreme Court Second Amendment case in. decades and what it did was it really. upended our previous understanding of. the second amendment by doing two things. one is it for the first time found a. Second Amendment right to carry a. firearm outside the home and then. secondly and most importantly. established a new test for gun. restriction rtion and whether or not.

they are in violation of the Second. Amendment essentially bruan opened a. door for litigant to argue that if a gun. is commonly use for self-defense it. makes it harder to justify a law that. would ban. it we begin with some breaking news. tonight out of the courts a major blow. to gun control a federal so as a result. of the Brewing test that was created you. have seen this tsunami of litigation. take place across the country a Texas. judge has ruled that people under fony.

indictments are allowed to carry guns. the Virginia judge has struck down. federal laws Banning the sale of. handguns to adults younger than 21 in. Washington state a ban on high-capacity. magazines just ruled. unconstitutional you have many many. court cases happening attempting to. knock down these gun restrictions a. federal judge has overturned. California's three decade old banon. assault. weapons so you know in the course of. looking at these hundreds of lawsuits. one thing.

stood out to me which was somewhat. surprising I started seeing the same. name over and over again which I had not. recognized before H it was a university. Professor named William English who had. conducted a survey of gun owners in. 2021 and well we look at the evidence. available and we basically put forward. three buckets of evidence to this court. one is that survey has been cited. repeatedly in these lawsuits in the bill.

English data over 60% said they own them. for self-defense his name was showing up. over and over again Professor William. English the bill English uh survey data. that is legal briefs and motions oral. arguments and Appel at courts we've put. in the record that 64% of the people who. own these plus 10 magazines have bought. them for the purposes of self was there. a survey that there was a survey your. honor and I was intrigued mainly because. I had never heard of him before. [Music].

and what exactly did the study say what. made the study interesting and important. was first of all the scope of it it was. the largest of his kind in many many. years probably since the 1990s he he. surveyed over 16,000 gun owners and. asked several key questions so one of. them was trying to find out how often. gun owners use their firearms for. self-defense mhm and then two other. questions dealt with whether they own.

AR-15 rifles commonly referred to. sometimes as assault weapons or. high-capacity magazines which are. magazines that hold 10 or more rounds. and those are kind of the central parts. of the. survey and what was the overall finding. from the study did it tell us how many. people were actually using guns how. frequently how common so the study found. a few things uh one was that gun owners. reported using their guns for. self-defense approximately 1 Point 7.

million times a year wow and in terms of. the types of firearms that people like. to own it also found that AR-15s and. high-capacity magazines are popular and. just by coincidence those three areas. are ones that are very important to the. the gun lobby and its litigation. campaign so if you for instance were. able to show that they are what the. court considers to be in common use for. lawful purposes then that also makes it. harder to make the claim that they.

should somehow be banned or restricted. so these lawyers all over the country. are citing a study that really bolsters. the case that these semi-automatic. weapons are common that they often have. high-capacity magazines that they're. basically used over and over again in. self-defense right yeah I mean it really. serves the gunr arguments pretty well. these. findings and that caused me to take a. closer look at just what the survey was. about and who Dr English was I had never.

heard of him before as I mentioned you. know because I've written about gun. issues for quite some time and the. universe of firearm Scholars is actually. pretty small many of them I talked to. were unfamiliar with him as well so. there was just a little bit of a mystery. here as to where he came from and what. the origins of this survey was so I. started to look more into how the survey. was done and one thing that was curious. to me was the survey had not been. published in a peer-reviewed journal. which is not required but it certainly.

lends credibility and strength to your. findings if you were to do that instead. it was uploaded to a website where. basically anybody can upload an. unpublished academic paper he also. didn't disclose the source of funding. for it which again is not required but. it's pretty standard in academic circles. so at this point Mike you're seeing some. issues around transparency that are. raising some alarm Bells but you're not. really sure what to make of it yet it. sounds like yeah I think that's true I.

mean it just raised more questions for. me and so one one way to kind of really. get a handle on what the survey says and. how it was conducted is to look at the. raw data so somewhere there has to be a. file with all of the questions that were. asked and the responses from people but. he did not post the raw data along with. his papers until about two years later I. went looking for it and I did manage to. locate it and downloaded it and looked. at it myself and what did you find well. a couple things really kind of stood out.

one was the questions that were asked of. the respondents were phrased differently. than how he portrayed them in the papers. he wrote about his results so in the. papers that he posted to this website. explaining the findings of the survey he. would describe the question asked as for. instance you know have you ever used. your gun for self-defense or have you. ever owned an AR-15 mhm but the actual. questions that were presented to the.

respondents had a little Preamble or an. introduction which was not described in. his papers and I'll give you an example. on the question of have you ever used. your gun for self-defense that was. actually preceded by a statement that. said many policymakers recognize that a. large number of people participate in. Shooting Sports but question how often. guns are used for self-defense oh wow. there was a similar lack of transparency. on another question that was asked about. high capacity.

magazines and it started out by saying. you know some have argued that few. people actually want or use high. capacity magazines and answering this. will help us establish how popular these. magazines are that phrasing was not. included in the papers that he posted. describing his survey findings the. reason that's important is because. social scientists will tell you that the. phrasing of the questions is crucial to. determining how someone's going to. answer and if you start off by sort of.

giving a a little Preamble that implies. that there are forces out there who. might question how often you really use. your gun or want your gun it has a. potential to skew the results in a. certain direction and in addition to. that there were just a couple of other. things I found curious in looking at the. raw data I mean one was the very broad. definition he used of what it means to. defend yourself with a gun it allowed. for for instance situations in which. somebody didn't even show the gun or. maybe even just told someone they had a.

gun and also it didn't specify what time. frame you may have done this and so. typically if you try to figure out what. the current state of events is for. defensive gun use you might ask have you. ever done it in the past year or past. two years or whatever this basically. asked if you ever done it in your. lifetime oh so you could have somebody. who may have used a gun for self-defense. back in the 1970s you know and that. counts oh wow there was similar phrasing. of questions for instance about whether. you've ever own own an AR-15 and again.

it was allowing people to count you know. whether they had one 10 20 30 years ago. but maybe not today so what does this. say about the actual numbers in the. study so that figure I mentioned of 1.67. million defensive gun uses a year you. know when talking to other experts on. this I mean that is definitely on the. high end of the range there are other. studies that put the number as less than. 100,000 times a year that's quite a. range right and this is where the. methodology becomes important because.

the way the survey is conducted the way. the questions are asked and all of that. affects the results so Mike you find the. study it's showing up in gun cases all. over the country where people are trying. to overturn State gun laws but it also. seems like you're seeing some red flags. with how the survey was actually. conducted so at this point tell me what. you're thinking well I'm I'm thinking. pretty specifically I need to know a lot. more about this. survey where did it come from who.

financed it and who is Dr. [Music]. English we'll be right. back so Mike what did you find out about. Dr William English so he's a political.

scientist and Economist at Georgetown. University he was a research fellow at. Harvard for a few years before joining. Georgetown in. 2016 he had a fairly established track. record of published papers on issues of. social science the humanities ethics and. public policy his Studies have focused a. lot on behavioral issues and what. incentives are for people to behave in. certain ways and that's part of what his. academic backgrounds is so it doesn't.

sound like he has much of a track record. on gun issues specifically right at. least publicly there's nothing which. indicates he had done research on guns. which made his debut with his survey. just a little bit unusual so you know I. wanted to find out more about how he got. involved with that and no obvious way to. do that is to try to talk to. him so I emailed him um I didn't hear. anything back so I emailed him again uh. I got no resp.

response I tried calling his office at. Georgetown I found his cell phone. number yeah hi Bill this is Mike. McIntyre at the New York Times called. that left a message been trying going. hold you I'm just working on a story. about Second Amendment litigation I want. to talk to you about your nothing I. texted him I didn't get a. response maybe you can point me in the. right direction I was trying to get in. touch with uh Professor Bill English I. visited his office Georgetown.

University he wasn't there and I finally. decided just to visit his. [Music]. house and so I you know walked up the. front door rang the bell waited but. there was no response. wow and you know I wasn't the only one. having difficulty getting him to talk. about the survey I discovered in court. records that the state of Washington who. they were being sued by a gun rights. Group which had cited Dr English survey.

and lawyers for the state had tried to. talk to him as well about the survey. they emailed him they tried to call him. they sent a certified letter and. eventually they issued a subpoena to try. to get him to respond and at some point. faced with the possibility that the. court was going to compel his testimony. the plaintiff in that case agreed to. withdraw all references to his research. from their case in order to oh wow not. have him submit the questions. this was starting to seem very strange.

to me I mean you've you know rarely. heard of an academic who isn't eager to. talk about their work and right in this. particular case especially it was. something that was gaining such. influence and attaction in the world of. litigation so there were just sort of a. lot of things which were raising. questions in my mind about why is he so. reluctant to talk about. [Music]. this so at this point it sounds like. you're kind of at a reporting dead end.

at least when it comes to getting Dr. English to explain his work to you and. how he conducted the. survey yes uh we did find one instance. where Dr English did discuss his work. publicly Smith and Wesson sales plummet. plus a conversation with Georgetown. Professor William English on his. groundbreaking new it was on this. podcast called the reload which is a. Firearms news site can you just tell. people a little bit more about yourself. before we begin yeah Stephen thank you. for having me um so I'm a professor at.

Georgetown in our business school and on. the podcast he says that his survey was. part of research he was doing for a book. project you know where are the most. interesting differences in our. assessment of sort of current gun use. current gun abuse uh gun ownership. Trends gun uh he hasn't published the. book yet he does talk about his. methodology and it's if anything I think. this is a conservative estimate because. right yeah actually let's talk about. that real quick actually says he thinks.

his estimate for self-defense may be a. bit conservative thank you so much for. joining us uh and again we'll have to. have you back on once you're closer to. publish date on that book great well. thank you Steve for having me great. great to have this conversation and also. one thing I didn't talk about was how. the research was funded and it's a. pretty standard thing in social science. research to disclose that you know. because studies like this are are not. cheap so I kept digging into the records. I could find and looking at Case Files I. discovered something which I had not.

previously known and was not widely. publicly known which is that Dr English. had served as a paid expert witness for. proun plaintiffs in at least four cases. before he'd done the survey so he might. not actually be as impartial of a. researcher as he presents himself to be. well you know it's not uncommon for. academic Scholars to serve as Witnesses. and lawsuits for one side of the other. but here with these cases he was serving. as a paid expert for the proun side of. the. litigation and there was one case in.

particular which became important it was. in 2019 in Vermont and an NRA back to. group was challenging a state ban on. high-capacity. magazines and they wanted to do a survey. of Vermont gun owners to find out how. common those high-capacity magazines. were and so in order to do the survey. they hired Dr English to do. it and he produced an expert report for. them saying that high-capacity magazines.

are popular and commonly used for. self-defense okay now he would say later. in a deposition that he was paid $20,000. to do the survey in the Vermont case the. reason that's important is because when. he produced his National survey in 2021. he described that earlier Vermont survey. as proof of concept for the national. survey what he doesn't say is that. Vermont survey was actually commissioned. by proun plaintiffs in an NRA backed.

lawsuit that's a pretty important point. to note but that's not explained in his. National survey which he did later so. now you're starting to form a real. picture of where some of Dr english's. funding is coming from yeah it still. didn't help me understand though how the. national firearm survey that he did was. funded and so to try to get a better. understanding of that I went back to the. court record and looked at one of the. filing. that Dr English did with a group called.

the center for human Liberty it was a. organization that joined with him in. filing a court brief and I just was. curious about what that organization was. it sounds like a very you know lofty. goal the center for human Liberty it. turns out that it was created just a. couple of months before it appeared with. him and this court filing oh wow has no. staff it uh uses for a physical address. a virtual office Prov provider in Las. Vegas and the whole thing just turned.

out to be basically kind of a phantom. organization it turned out that this. thing was funded uh and created by the. founders of the Firearms policy. Coalition which is a very aggressive. litigation group behind a lot of the. lawsuits that we see in courts trying to. overturn gun restrictions and that got. me into the world of what it's often. referred to as dark. money the world of nonprofit advocacy. groups whose funding sources are often.

very opaque or Anonymous and in digging. into this I eventually discovered yet. another group called the Constitutional. defense fund which is again a type of. group that seems to have come out of. nowhere it's not clear who runs it its. address is a UPS store in Virginia but. looking at its tax filings which are. public I was able to see that it. received big infusions of money from. somewhere in the leadup to to the. Supreme Court's Brewing case and.

dispersed that money as payments to a. number of interesting. recipients the law firm that had paid Dr. English for his Vermont survey work a. board member of the NRA the Firearms. policy Coalition and interestingly a. grant to Dr English himself for. $58,000 wow that was a very interesting. Revelation because this is a proun group. the con institutional defense fund it. lists one of its causes as Second.

Amendment defense and here it was paying. money to Dr English right around the. time that he was doing his National. survey now because he's not talking to. me I can't ask him anything about that. but I did go to Georgetown University. and to see if they had any knowledge of. it they said they didn't but they did. make the point that as a faculty member. he can do research projects on his own.

so Mike you're finding all of these. connections some of which seem kind of. indirect maybe a little bit obfuscated. between Dr English and some of these gun. groups but do we know if the money. helped to actually fund Dr english's. National survey it's unclear whether it. played a direct role in the survey and. it's important to point out of course. that the source of funding by itself. doesn't necessarily mean there's. anything wrong with the survey but let's. face it there's a reason why you want to. know who paid for it I mean whenever you.

do a survey like this there are. assumptions and choices that are made. about the framing of questions the order. in which they're asked how the sample of. respondents is selected the methodology. used to make sense of the findings and. even the smallest decisions one way or. the other on those types of issues can. skew the results right there's a reason. why researchers academics typically. disclose the source of their funding in. papers or reports or other things that. they put out right and there's one other. thing that we do know about the funding. and that is that among the payments that.

this proun group had made was an $80,000. payment to a law firm that helped write. and file an amicus brief in the Supreme. Court's Brewing case for Dr English and. it's important because you know an amus. brief is what they call a friend of the. court filing and it's in this case. designed to support the legal arguments. being made by the plaintiffs before The. Supreme Court and this was the first. time that his National firearm survey. appeared in a court proceeding now there.

are lots of Amicus filings in Supreme. Court cases I don't think anyone can say. that an amicus brief by itself has ever. turned the tide in a Supreme Court. decision but the scholarship and the. legal arguments in these briefs are paid. attention to and given weight and the. case of Dr English it did carry a lot of. weight because it was cited in at least. five briefs that were filed in that case.

we will hear argument this morning in. case. 2843 New York state right and Dr English. his research were invokes during oral. arguments I think that people of good. moral character who start drinking a lot. can get pretty angry at each other and. if they each have a concealed weapon who. knows and Justice Steven Brier who is. one of the Court's liberal justices. raised the concern that if by. eliminating these restrictions is going. to lead to more violence on the streets.

what are we supposed to say in your. opinion that is going to be clear enough. that we will not produce a kind of uh. gun related. chaos so Justice Brier I would sort of. point you to two things that maybe the. plaintiff's attorney referred him to Dr. english's brief as a Counterpoint wow a. problem if you want to look at the. empirical evidence and I know Justice. Brier you asked about this please also. look at the brief on the top side.

because it's a very rigorous statistic. it also was cited by Justice Samuel Alo. in his concurring opinion so it's. inarguably um an instance in which this. particular ambigous filing did get the. attention of people involved in that. [Music]. case why do you think that the court. failed to give the study and Dr English. the kind of scrutiny that you did well. you know my on the story Jody caner has.

looked into this as well and there. really is no mechanism in the Supreme. Court to vet things like this and. there's a couple reasons for that one is. that there's a presumption by the time a. case gets the Supreme Court level. evidentiary issues have already been. worked out somewhere in the lower courts. but that's not the case with amicus. briefs amicus briefs could contain. opinions and and information from almost. anybody and there really is no system in. the high court to analyze that to vet it. and figure out how legitimate it is but.

you know after the bruan ruling and. after the study was cited by Supreme. Court Justice we do see a big increase. in the number of times Dr english's. research shows up in lower court cases. so I think that the attention that was. given to his work in the Supreme Court. case helped Propel his findings into the. litigation campaign that followed the. breu case so this kind of seems like. it's bringing us full circle this study. that has these issues that you've. uncovered is helping gun Advocates.

overturn gun laws all over the country. not by working its way up through the. court system and all these smaller cases. but by actually walking through the. front door at the Supreme Court the. highest court in the land and getting. the rubber stamp from one of the. justices even that's right so I'm. curious Mike at the end of the day where. does the responsibility lie for keeping. a study like this out of the courts and. potentially becoming integral to. changing gun law. well I think in the end the story of Dr.

English and his survey is really The. Logical culmination of a decades long. effort by the gun lobby to change our. understanding of the Second Amendment in. such a way that it allows for this kind. of litigation to proceed knocking down. gun restrictions across the. country because of Bruin courts are. having to make these decisions based on. things like historical precedence and. statistical analysis and since you know. judges aren't experts on these things.

they turn to scholarship and some of the. scholarship that turns out has ties to. prun. interests and so you have courts making. their decisions based on information of. Uncertain Providence if you will and all. of it is the product of this decades. long campaign by gun advocacy groups so. you're likely to see more and more of. these kinds of academic papers and. research and legal arguments being made. because that's sort of the new territory. of where we find. ourselves so there might be more studies.

like this and more gun Scholars like Dr. English in the future most. definitely well Mike thank you so much. thank. [Music]. [Music]. you we'll be right.

back here's what else you need to know. today Russian President Vladimir Putin. and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. signed a mutual assistance Packa the. deal revives a Cold War era agreement. that requires each country to defend the. other against outside aggression and. it's the strongest signal yet that the. agreement among the world's strongest. nuclear powers to curb North Korea's. nuclear program has. fizzled and there's the pitch to Willie.

swung on H Deep to left that one is way. back way back back number 600 for Willie. ma the legendary giant center fielder. Willie Mays died on Tuesday at age 93. number 600 for Maze he hit over the 370t. mark a standing ovation here in San. Diego. po known as the say he kid he was among. the first generation of black players to. play in Major League Baseball in the.

1950s he was brilliant at every part of. the game at the plate in the field. rounding the bases some even said he was. the greatest baseball player of all time. the game of baseball has been great to. me I have just about everything I. need the only thing that I'm looking for. out of baseball now is that I can teach. other kids to be as greater athletes as. I was in my.

day today's episode was produced by Will. Reed Nina Feldman and CLA tennis gter. with help from Michael Simon Johnson it. was edited by Michael benois contains. original music by Maran Lozano Alicia. BBE Rowan nisto and Dan Powell and was. engineered by Alyssa Moxley our theme. music is by Jim brunberg and Ben. lansburg of wonderly. [Music].

that's it for the daily I'm Rachel. Abrams we'll see you tomorrow. [Music].