CDC scrubbed defensive gun statistics after pressure from gun control groups, says report

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) removed statistics from its website showing a high number of defensive gun use (DGU) incidents after pressure from gun control groups, according to a report published this month. 

Anti-gun rights group Gun Violence Archive (GVA) tried approaching the CDC last year but was ignored until the White House and Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) stepped in to make the introduction. 

A collection of emails obtained by The Reload show GVA took issue with a particular statistic on the CDC website showing that firearms were used in self-defense in the United States between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year. The group also attacked Gary Kleck, a criminologist whose analysis found that DGU cases actually settled at the top of that range. 

“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” GVA Executive Director Mark Bryant wrote dramatically to CDC officials after a 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.” 

Bryant complained that the data were standing in the way of anti-gun rights legislation. 

“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 in the same email. “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.” 

At first, the CDC stood firmly by the data, pointing out that the GVA only studies DGU cases that were reported to law enforcement, which is a very small subset of the population, while the CDC uses data from large studies and surveys. Furthermore, according to The Reload, the GVA bases its data solely on cases reported by mainstream media and police reports, though it is unclear how many police reports they have access to. 

But following a secret meeting with the gun control operatives, the CDC relented and removed the statistics.

It remains unknown what transpired during the meeting, since no transcript was provided in response to The Reload’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. All that is known is that it was a half-hour meeting on Microsoft Teams and involved the GVA’s Bryant and Devin Hughes, along with anti-gun rights operative Po Murray from Newton Action Alliance. 

Murray is passionately anti-gun. She made a name for herself by frequently accusing people of supporting mass shootings if they don’t support a ban on assault weapons. In one instance, Murray accused a father whose child was murdered in the Parkland mass shooting of supporting mass shootings. 

Following the mysterious meeting the CDC sent an email to the operatives on December 10, 2021. 

“We are planning to update the fact sheet in early 2022 after the release of some new data,” wrote the CDC’s Violence Prevention Division Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication Beth Reimels. “We will also make some edits to the content we discussed that I think will address the concerns you and other partners have raised.” 

The CDC justified the change to an inquiry by The Trace, saying that the data might “raise more questions than it answered.” 

“Because estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to study design, and given the wide variability in previous estimates and the desire to keep the fact sheet short and succinct,” the agency told the publication, “it made the most sense to remove the numbers from the fact sheet and acknowledge that additional research is necessary to understand defensive gun use prevalence, frequency, circumstances, and outcomes.”