I'll soon be launching a survey of all my readers and other gun owner-Americans around the nation. Readers of my Newsletter will receive the Survey this week and others need to give their permission if they would care to take the survey by opting in to the Newsletter.

Years ago, I formulated an identity of purpose between the armed citizen and citizen CPR training. I don't know how many gun owners know CPR as part of their preparedness plan, so I thought I'd ask. While I'm at it, I'll be asking a few other questions as germane to the second amendment as part of a larger picture of our bigger government.

Decades ago, I was asked to join a panel that started the whole thing; I was asked to furnish the Paramedic's field viewpoint to why doctors and attorneys should get behind the movement to train citizens in CPR. You'd think it was a slam dunk, but we had met resistance. As you might imagine, we [Paramedics around the country for that function] persuaded them and the rest is history. Today, in 2011, no one can imagine the medical community at any time being skeptical of training citizens in CPR.

Over the years, I noted one other condition so very similar that the response would also be similar: the private ownership and carry of lethal force: guns. The armed citizen is identical to citizen CPR.

I've noted this for decades now where, for most reasonable people, misunderstanding, mistaken notions and assumptions could be rectified for making their streets safer streets by educating the electorate, not necessarily with facts, but with personal meaning. I write books and articles on that, but this is a different passageway to safer streets. Or, safer campuses or safer workplaces.

In the seventies, doctors saw their apprehensions about civilians abated and washed away. Today, this week in fact, college trustees, fellow students, and others express similar apprehensions about armed students who might sit next to them, or have a differing opinion in a debate, and they -- along with the rest of America -- just might like to know one more fact beyond a simple assurance that they are safer with armed adults than without. They might like to have more than the authority of a civil right and our word for it.

I think I've found it.

Enter the Safer Streets Gun Owner Survey. I have a series of questions for gun owner-Americans, and there are several things we are looking for. It's time for the American gun owner to be heard not as a "gun lobby," but as American individuals, heads of household, and as loved ones.

The survey is national in scope, and will be available sometime this week. You must give your permission -- opt-in -- to the Safer Streets Newsletter to take the survey. One survey per household, please. Results should flow in the weeks following.

Please go to www.GoodForTheCountry.com to learn more.

John Longenecker is publisher of the Safer Streets Newsletter and Commentary.