by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

A recently released survey of teens about violence and drugs should not be misused by gun control advocates to advance their cause, said the founder of the California institute that conducted the survey.

The national press sensationalized the story, focusing on the gun aspect, when in actuality, the survey was considerably more broad.

Michael Josephson, head of the Marina del Rey-based Joseph & Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics, told Gun Week, “It worries me whenever something we do might be interpreted by somebody (to further their position) and I hate it. We release something, and people use it to confirm, or consider it an attack, on their issue.”

The survey was conducted last year with more than 15,000 teens participating, Josephson said. Results were released on April 1, but it was not an “April Fool’s Joke,” nor was it accepted that way by the firearms community. Josephson said electronic mail was highly critical, and questioned the motives of the Institute for doing the survey.

Much of that criticism can be blamed on two things.

First, when news agencies initially reported the story, it was mistakenly asserted that many of the respondents claimed they had taken a gun to school. Actually, Josephson said in a news release that “a disturbing number take weapons to school,” which has a significantly different connotation.

Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA), noted, “Weapons could mean anything, and school districts consider nail clippers a weapon.”

The survey was released on the eve of “First Monday,” an annual event staged by the Alliance for Justice, to promote an anti-gun agenda. This year, the Alliance, which includes the anti-gun Violence Policy Center, pushed a program that was, according to the National Rifle Association (NRA), “geared towards manipulating college and high school students into collaborating with anti-gun doctors, lawyers, social workers, teachers, and anyone else who supports attacks on our right to keep and bear arms.”

The survey results were released on a Sunday, not normally a day of the week for such announcements. This further led the gun community to suspect the timing was no coincidence.

Josephson said he did not personally release the study, but he did call it a coincidence. He insisted he had no knowledge of “First Monday,” and that he would not “time” the release for such a partisan purpose.

“This was never really about guns,” he insisted. “It was about character and the idea of personal choice.”

Josephson, a retired attorney, is founder of the Character Counts Coalition, and he serves on President Bush’s Transition Team for Education. He was also an earlier recipient of the America’s Award for Integrity from former President Ronald Reagan.

He also told Gun Week that pro-gun actor Tom Selleck sits on the Institute’s board of directors. However, he insisted that Selleck’s “passionate beliefs” about gun rights do not influence the Institute’s work. Indeed, he said, “We take no position on abortion, we take no position on gays and we take no position on gun control.”

Josephson expressed astonishment that media reports focused only on the gun issue, and gave less attention to the other issues touched by the survey.

“This is only one small part of the report,” he stated. “We asked about a number of things, including alcohol, drugs and guns.”
Media focus on the gun angle distracts from the overall study, which, he said, is aimed more at personal responsibility. He is miffed that some are using it to push a gun control agenda.

“The kid at Santee (High School) took the gun out of a locked box,” Josephson stressed. “He stole his father’s key to get that gun. This is not a question of metal detectors. It is a question of character. The ‘problem’ is people, and the problem we’re addressing is choice and character. I don’t see taking away guns as a realistic option. I don’t see how you can lock them up any more than did this father in Santana.”

In his April 1 news release to the media, Josephson acknowledged, “The seeds of violence can be found in schools all over America. Today’s teens, especially boys, have a high propensity to use violence when they are angry, they have easy access to guns, drugs and alcohol, and a disturbing number take weapons to school.”

However, he said just calling for more gun control is not what the survey was aimed at. Gun control, he said, “is not addressing the real problem we have to address. It’s young people’s attitudes about violence and using violence against someone else.”

Josephson suggested that focusing on guns takes the issue out of context.

“The report, read in context,” he argued, “ought to be sobering for anyone concerned with young people, not because of guns, but because our schools are not as safe as they ought to be.”

And he put that into perspective: “We know this from statistics, that the likelihood of gun violence happening in any school is very small, but if a third of the kids are afraid of this, that has already had an impact.”

Josephson named the Institute in memory of his parents. He was able to establish the facility after selling a publication company some years ago. Its sole focus has been on ethics and doing what’s right, and promoting that philosophy. He draws no salary, and the Institute operates on donations and some grant money, and fees for services.

“I was a law professor for many years,” Josephson said. “I became disenchanted with the tendency of lawyers to focus more on winning than on justice. I started re-examining what is right and what is wrong….I realized we were creating a culture of relativism, where there were no standards of right and wrong.

“We have got to be scrupulously non-partisan,” he said. “Our work is toward your goal, personal responsibility.”