re: Obama's CDC study on Firearms.

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That would seem to me to be a big problem with the study.

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For the one in the Am.J of Pre. Med? It can be. But that's the study sample itself. From the Methods:

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Data were aggregated on household firearm ownership and criminal perpetration in each of the 50 states for the years 2001– 2002 and 2004 (the only years with available state-level firearm ownership data). State-level data on firearm ownership were taken from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a large, nationally representative, annual survey of the U.S. population, administered by CDC.15 BRFSS includes 4200,000 respondents annually and provides representative national- and state-level prevalence estimates for health-related behaviors and risk factors. In each of the years 2001, 2002, and 2004, BRFSS included this question: Are any firearms now kept in or around your home? Include those kept in a garage, outdoor storage area, car, truck, or other motor vehicle (the 2004 survey did not include the second sentence). This question was not administered in California in 2002 or Hawaii in 2004; therefore, these state–year observations were excluded from the analysis. When generating state-level estimates, the survey design was taken into consideration by specifying the primary sampling units and the sampling weights (denoting the inverse of the probability that the observation is included), to ensure accuracy.16

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Without a consistent method to track state-wide and nationwide gun ownership, we will always rely on the self-reported surveys, which in this case comes from a system developed by the CDC.