COX RESPONDS
Last week, we reported that Jack Kemp had released a report by a "nuclear expert" questioning the conclusions of the Cox report on Chinese espionage. Bob Novak has subsequently devoted a column to making Kemp's case. We spoke yesterday with Chris Cox, who pointed out that it's easy to accuse him of reaching "unwarranted conclusions" when the evidence that warrants those conclusions is classified. The report's author, Cox added, had not tried to contact anyone on his committee: "not a single staff member, not even the receptionist, let alone any member of the committee." Cox said that he had been trying to reach Kemp for a week. "He refuses to take my calls. . . . Another person who refuses to talk to us is Novak."

WARNER VS. ALLEN
Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican, has cast some puzzling votes lately. In May he voted with the Democrats on gun control-making it harder for his fellow Republican, George Allen, to use the issue in his race to unseat Democratic senator Chuck Robb. Yesterday Warner crossed the aisle again to support a Robb amendment on women's health issues, rather than wait a few days to vote for a Republican version. If this pattern of backing Robb and undermining Allen keeps up, people are going to start to wonder if Warner wants Allen to win-or if he'd rather keep all the attention that comes from being the only Republican senator in the area.

POLL FIGHT AT THE OK CORRAL
Finally, an acknowledgment in the mainstream press that Littleton didn't much change public opinion on guns. Tom W. Smith, director of the General Social Survey at the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago (whew!), had an op-ed in yesterday's Washington Post showing steady support for some gun controls over the three years of his survey on the subject. He marshals this evidence to argue for gun control. And that evidence is somewhat selective. For example, he writes, "Support for gun-control measures. . . is highest among those who do not personally own guns, those more knowledgeable about both the use/misuse of guns and gun-control laws, those concerned about crime and who see crime as increasing," etc.

Right away this raises some red flags. If the gun-control supporters are disproportionately non-gun-owners and disproportionately see crime as increasing (it isn't), it would be odd for them to be "more knowledgeable" about guns and related issues. So we went to see the full study at www.norc.uchicago.edu. To be knowledgeable, it turns out, a respondent needed to know, e.g., that most murders involve guns, that guns should be kept unloaded until ready to use, and that there are no federal safety standards for guns. It was not necessary to know that states that allow law-abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons have lower murder rates than states that don't.

Smith is no propagandist. He's willing to admit that the lawsuits against gunmakers are quite unpopular. (Leave it to Al Gore, by the way, to try to score points by associating himself with the lawsuits. Which of his pollsters came up with that?) But his reading of the polls is skewed, and he places too high a value on poll results in general. The assumption of his piece appears to be that the polls settle what policy should be, which is clearly incorrect. Nor can the results always be believed. He writes, "People are even willing to pay more taxes to reduce illegal access to firearms." Never trust a poll question about whether people would be willing to pay extra for X when they aren't, in fact, giving up anything more than a poll answer.

The fact that the public strongly supports various gun controls is of course politically salient: It means, for instance, that every day that the news is dominated by a gun-control fight is a bad day for the Republican Party's image with the public. But on the question of what position to take and what policy to pass, the politically important poll results are the ones that concern intensity: Who cares enough about the issue actually to vote on it? The longstanding answer to that question is, the pro-gun side. Denny Hastert's apparent belief that Republicans have to pass a gun bill in the aftermath of Littleton is mistaken. All that's changed is that a tiny fraction of the public now volunteers gun control when asked about priorities for the country.

What should a pro-gun politician-just to pick one at random, let's take Texas governor George W. Bush-say when confronted over an unpopular policy such as conceal-carry laws? He can say that the law he supports is the law of the land in 31 states. And that crime rates in these states, including Tennessee and Arkansas, are falling. And then he can ask for the next question.