DOI: 10.3886/icpsr24587.v1
title: ABC News/The Washington Post Gun Poll, April 2007
title: Version 1

description: This special topic poll, fielded April 22, 2007, is a part of continuing series of monthly polls that solicit public opinion on various political and social issues. This poll focused on respondents' views on gun control and laws. Respondents were asked whether they favored stricter gun laws, whether they would support laws requiring a nationwide ban on semiautomatic handguns, a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons, a nationwide ban on people carrying a concealed weapon, and a law requiring a nationwide ban on the sale of handguns, except to law enforcement officers. Respondents were also asked whether they thought stricter gun control laws would reduce the amount of violent crime, whether the best way of reducing gun violence was either by passing stricter gun control laws or by stricter enforcement of existing laws, if the respondent or anyone in their home owned a gun, and whether they thought states should or should not be required to report mentally ill people to a federal database in order to prevent them from buying guns. Views were sought concerning the Virginia Tech shooting and university policies. Specifically, respondents were asked whether they thought school officials did or did not do enough to investigate concerns that the student who committed these shootings was mentally unstable, whether news organizations did the right thing or the wrong thing by airing photos and videos of the Virginia Tech gunman, whether they supported a law requiring universities to provide stricter screening and counseling for students who are suspected of being mentally unstable and possibly dangerous to themselves or others, and whether they supported changing confidentiality laws so that when a college student is suspected of being mentally disturbed, the school would be required to notify their parents. Views were also sought on the primary cause of gun violence in America and whether shootings like the one at Virginia Tech could happen in the respondent's community. Respondents were queried on whether they supported legislation giving Washington, D.C., a full voting member in the United States House of Representatives and whether they approved of the proposed law that would give Democratic D.C. a full voting member in the House, while also giving the Republican state of Utah another congressional seat. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, education, political party affiliation, and political philosophy.
description: The data contain a weight variable (WEIGHT) that should be used in analyzing the data. The weights were derived using demographic information from the Census to adjust for sampling and nonsampling deviations from population values. Respondents customarily were classified into one of 48 cells based on age, race, sex, and education. Weights were assigned so the proportion in each of these 48 cells matched the actual population proportion according to the Census Bureau's most recent Current Population Survey.
description: Households were selected by random-digit dialing. Within households, the respondent selected was the adult living in the household who last had a birthday and who was home at the time of the interview.
description: Datasets: 
DS1: ABC News/The Washington Post Gun Poll, April 2007
description: Persons aged 18 and over living in households with telephones in the contiguous 48 United States.
description: computer-assisted telephone interview (CATI)The data available for download are not weighted. Users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.The CASEID variable was created in order to make it a unique identifier.The data collection was produced by Taylor Nelson Sofres of Horsham, PA. Original reports using these data may be found via the ABC
News Polling Unit Web site and via the

Washington Post Opinion Surveys and Polls Web site.System missing values were recoded to -1.The variables CSA, METRODIV, CBSA, and MSA contain unknown codes.The variables BLOCKCNT, MSAFLAG, and NIELSMKT were converted from character to numeric.To preserve respondent confidentiality, codes for the variables FIPS (FIPS County) and ZIP (ZIP Code) have been replaced with blank codes.Several codes in the variable CBSA contain diacritical marks.