gun control doesn't directly overlap with conservative/liberal political self-identification
???
About 30% of self-identified Republicans and 20% of self-identified Democrats hold opinions on gun control that directly contradict the positions of the political party to which they belong.
Because the study in question here used a general political scale and party self-identification, many people will be identified as favoring gun control even if they did not do so. There are good reasons for this -- I'd accuse the study of priming its subjects, if the authors asked about beliefs on gun control directly before asking about a hypothetical study on gun c...
Original article: Motivated Numeracy and Enlightened Self-Government.
Easy-to-read summary of the results: Science Confirms: Politics Wrecks Your Ability to Do Math.
Easier-to-read summary of the summary: A group including both liberals and conservatives were first tested for numeracy, then given either fictional stats on the efficacy of a rash treatment (how many people get better/worse, with/without the treatment) or quantitatively identical fictional stats on gun regulation and crime (in how many cities crime went up/down, with/without gun control laws). They had to say whether, according to the stats, the treatment was effective or whether the laws reduced crime. (In half of the cases the answer was yes, in half no). For the rash problem, numerate people did better in giving the right answer, irrespectively of their politics. For the gun control problem, numerate people (of both political sides) were much better at giving the right answer when it agreed with their political beliefs; when the conclusion implied by the stats disagreed with their political beliefs, they did no better than innumerate people.