Culture and Social Issues

CDC Issues Correction After Previously Lowballing Data On Guns Used For Self-Defense

Peretz Partensky/Flickr

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated its webpage regarding firearm injury on Sept. 29 to correct verbiage that underestimated the frequency with which guns are used for self-defense.

The CDC had restored information regarding studies of the use of firearms for self-defense on its website in August, reversing a 2022 move made during the Biden administration. The updated verbiage on the site provides a new estimate on “defensive gun uses” (DGU), which had previously been skewed by a survey with a low estimate of DGUs that was later found to have problems.

“Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to study design. The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence indicates a range of 500,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year,” the site now displays.

The site previously used a much lower figure as the low end of the range of estimates on DGUs.

“Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to study design,” the CDC previously said on its website, while linking to a report summarizing surveys regarding defensive gun use. “The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence indicates a range of 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses each year.”

“The NAS report didn’t make it clear that the 500,000 number was just for handguns, and the top estimate from the NAS report was 3.7 million,” the Crime Prevention Research Institute said on its website. “But this is a big improvement over what had originally been put up at the CDC website.”

In 2022, the CDC took down information about the studies during the Biden administration after a lobbying campaign by anti-Second Amendment groups backed by Democratic Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin, according to emails obtained by The Reload. Some advocates claimed that having the report on the CDC’s website made it harder to secure support for gun-control legislation.

Congress in 1996 prohibited the CDC from underwriting advocacy for gun control following studies that claimed guns in the home were more likely to kill people in the home than to be used for self-defense. Pro-Second Amendment groups cited bias against firearms by some of the researchers.

“My own view on gun control is simple,” Deborah Prothrow-Stith, a public health professor at Harvard in the 1990s wrote, according to Reason magazine. “I hate guns and cannot imagine why anybody would want to own one. If I had my way, guns for sport would be registered, and all other guns would be banned.”

The CDC came under fire for its efforts to promote censorship during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, America First Legal (AFL) released documents showing the CDC working with Twitter, Facebook and Google to “censor free speech and promote Biden administration propaganda,” the group said.