Report: CDC Pressured to Delete Defensive Gun Use Stats

References to a study citing defensive gun use statistics were removed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) after gun control advocates complained the information would make passing new restrictions more difficult, The Reload reported.

Citing emails it obtained, The Reload noted the lobbying culminated with a private meeting between the gun control advocates and CDC officials. It said introductions from the White House and the office of Sen.. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., helped lead the way for the advocates to reach the CDC officials to begin with.

Sparking the advocates' complaints was the CDC's description of its review of studies that estimated defensive gun uses [DGU] occur between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the U.S.

The Reload said Mark Bryant, who heads the Gun Violence Archive, wrote: "[T]hat 2.5 million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again," Mark Bryant, one of the attendees, had written 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.

"And while that very small study by [criminologist] 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."

The CDC initially stood behind the description in the defensive gun use section of its "fast fact" website on gun violence, but backtracked after a previously undisclosed virtual meeting with the advocates on Sept. 15, 2021, according to The Reload.

"We are planning to update the fact sheet in early 2022 after the release of some new data," Beth Reimels, Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, said in one email to the three advocates on Dec. 10. "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 did not respond to a request for comment on the decision.

Meanwhile, a majority of Americans in a November Gallup survey said they support stricter gun laws [57%], but overall support has dipped slightly since the spring, when 66% supported it.

The poll showed another 32% of Americans said gun laws should remain as they are now, and 10% would like to see the laws more lenient.