Gun-control advocates successfully convinced the Center For Disease Control (CDC) to erase key data on defensive gun use (DGU) in America because it was a barrier to enacting tougher gun laws, a new report by The Reload reveals.
Per the CDC, a defensive gun use is “generally defined as the use of a firearm to protect and defend oneself, family, other people, and/or property against crime or victimization.”
The number of annual DGUs is a controversial topic because there is no perfect way to track that information.
To explicate, most DGUs don’t involve actual gunfire, the mere presence of a firearm is enough to de-escalate the situation or send the perp running and, in such cases, police reports aren’t always filed.
This means criminologists have to rely on public surveys, along with police reports and media coverage of DGUs, to get an approximation of their frequency.
SEE ALSO: Suppressed CDC Survey Indicates Over 2 Million Defensive Gun Uses Per Year… in 1998
Gary Kleck, a criminologist at Florida State University, put forth a study in the ’90s that concluded, based on a national survey, that in an average year 2.23 million Americans use a firearm to defend themselves or their families.
On the other side of the coin, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that there were about 300,000 crimes involving firearms in 2008.
Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010).
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2013. Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
If Kleck’s estimates are accurate, it would mean that for every one bad guy to use a gun in the commission of a crime that year, seven good guys used one in defense of themselves or their families.
The notion that responsibly armed citizens defend themselves every day in this country is a death knell to the gun prohibitionist lobby. The fact that it could be at a ratio of 7 to 1 (good guys vs. bad guys) is even more infuriating.
SEE ALSO: CDC: Gun Homicide Rates Spiked 35% in 2020
This explains why gun-control activists were so hellbent to scrub Kleck’s data off the CDC website.
As The Reload reported, with the help of the White House and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, a group of gun controllers was allowed to meet with the CDC in 2021 to discuss getting rid of the estimates.
“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” Mark Bryant, one of the attendees, wrote to CDC officials after their meeting. “It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value – even as an outlier point in honest DGU discussions.”
Video here for those asking. My brother just recorded with his phone so bear with background noise. Dont know if a regular clip is out there. https://t.co/7vCUu0VrjC
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) December 16, 2022
Bryant, who curates the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), went on to spell out the problem as it relates to the gun-ban agenda.
“And while that very small study by Gary Kleck has been debunked repeatedly by everyone from all sides of this issue [even Kleck] it still remains canon by gun rights folks and their supporting politicians and is used as a blunt instrument against gun safety regulations every time there is a state or federal level hearing,” he wrote.
SEE ALSO: Major Errors in FBI’s ‘Active Shooter’ Report Perpetuates Narrative that Good Guys w/ Guns Don’t Stop Bad Guys with Guns
“Put simply, in the time that study has been published as ‘a CDC Study’ gun violence prevention policy has ground to a halt, in no small part because of the misinformation that small study provided,” Bryant added.
Kleck has not retracted his research. He stands by his numbers. He also accused the CDC of engaging in “blatant censorship” when it removed his DGU estimates from its website this year.
“CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups,” Kleck told The Reload. “It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do.”
If you visit the CDC website today, you will not find estimates on DGUs like you would in years past. Instead, you’ll see this:
Any reasonable person would conclude that the CDC’s now obfuscating the truth with respect to DGUs. No longer is it apparent that good guys with guns defend themselves, at the very least, tens of thousands of times each year. Gun-control advocates got exactly what they wanted.
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cdc isn’t that the government agency that spreads lies, half-truths and manipulated statistics to convince us that we should all get a questionable at best “vaccine” that has never been tested for all of its claims of stopping and slowing down the virus? Oh, then I understand why they don’t report defensive gun statistics since it goes against the narrative of guns being the newest health epidemic. Maybe it should just report on who forced it to stop this reporting and how much money it has taken from anti-Second amendment groups, we would all get the true picture then.
I am a gun person, I am not a stupid gun person. Pro gun folks did everything they could to keep the CDC form doing anything. Now after all that interference by Republicans your mad that there is information that could of proved your case. We could have had this information over a decade ago. THIS IS STUPID GUN PEOPLES FAULT FOR SUPPRESSING ANY AND ALL GUN RELATED STATISTICS THAT COULD PROVE WHAT THEY BELIEVED IS FACT A FACT.
The greatest threat to law abiding gun owners is the stupid ones because those are the ones people remember not those of us who are law abiding. Stop licking the copper wash of of 22’s so you can eat that sweet lead.
YOU ARE AT FAULT NOT THE ANTI-GUN FOLK.
Really LOL? Because the report specifically stated that it was the ‘Executive Director for the Gun Violence Archive’ who worked directly with the CDC to suppress the information. How’s that Leftist Kool-Aid taste?
Get a grip, the same CDC that ignores cancer clusters throughout the nation tries to have fiream ownership considered some form of a pathogen. The CDC is compromised and CANNOT be trusted.
What supporting examples can you present for your accusations? Please do NOT even bother if you are trading in Marc Zuckerberg facebook propoganda on how the NRA et cetera supposedly kept the CDC and other government agencies from studying “gun violence.” The CDC does NOT study this issue, instead they use tax payer funds to spread political junk science. The left can do that on their own dime.
Start backing up your empty reckless post.
Well, just goes to prove, libtards are not only retarded but they’re LIARS too. They’re just taking up good space in this country. Time for them to go.
I’ve had to draw my pistol back in 1989 and 1992 against two potential assaults. I never reported them or called police as I was more concerned I’d be charged, but both perps knew they were on the wrong side of the law.
The CDC should have the study posted under mental disease statistics.
Gun control has always been about citizen control. Any talk about “public safety” is nothing more than a smokescreen for the benefit of the “useful idiots.”
If you are wise and have been following the news, you know not to trust the CDC or the FDA. They are nothing but Leftist shills, pushing Pfizer corporate dogma.
Or FTC, CIA, FBI, CNN, CBS, ABC etc…
NFL, MLB, NHL…
Communism 101 control the information, put and keep the populace in a state of fear and terror, prevent the ability to rise up against oppression, and create a dependency on the state for all needs.
Why is the CDC involved? Because they did/are doing such a fine job with the virus; as noted in my first sentence.
By what tortured logic does the CDC have any compelling interest in firearms data? Is anything about firearms disease-related?
What else would they do but tailor the available data to suit their political agenda?
It’s not about having the best, most convincing data anymore, it’s about silencing conflicting points of view.