Signs of the times

[Lamplighter]

You have more faith in these small samplings being representative, than I do.
People like myself that don't do polls, suspect the people that do, ...

I guess I should have added a third possibility... denial

To argue that sample size is too small is weak.
It only takes a sample of a few hundred to sample a large population
(e.g., ~350 for a population of 500,000 or more at 95% confidence level),
and above that population, sample size has negligible effect on the results.
To play with these variables, there are on-line calculators
to determine sample size for given confidence levels, intervals, and population sizes.

I don't disagree with the general thesis of the author in your links in the boingboing articles.

Social surveys are difficult. They are not counting marbles in a jar.
People don't always answer questions truthfully/completely/at all
Also, given a little bit of paranoia the answers may be deliberately misleading.
And paranoia does exist in a big way among some 2nd Amendment advocates,
and to a lesser extent even among the general population of hunters and sportsmen/women.

In the boingboing articles (how many times a year are guns used in self defense)
the range of results to that question is very broad.
But politically, it cuts both ways.
The argument that it's a large of times is no stronger than
an argument it's a small number of times.

All in all, the NY Times article presented the results of the repeated surveys
over many years,with valid sample sizes, and reasonable confidence intervals,
such that to not respect the trend line fits well with my third possibility.