The CDC recently restored information on defensive gun use that it removed from its website in 2022 after gun-control advocates privately pressured agency officials to take it down. Until May 2022, the CDC cited a 2013 National Academies of Sciences (NAS) report that the agency had co-sponsored. The report reviewed studies that produced widely varying estimates of defensive gun use. It cited an estimate of 108,000 defensive gun uses annually, but regarding the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) estimates, the NAS warns the “108,000 is difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” The 60,000 estimate is from an earlier NCVS. The report noted that estimates from national surveys as cited by Kleck ranged from about 500,000 to more than 3 million defensive gun uses per year.
Mark Bryant, the founder of the Gun Violence Archive, was among gun control advocates who complained that gun-rights advocates had cited the estimates so often to “stop [gun-control] legislation.” The CDC has now restored its link to the NAS report, but it misleadingly says the report puts defensive gun use at only 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually, but the report itself states that the national survey estimates that specifically asked about defensive gun use range from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year, citing Kleck 2001a. But there is no national survey in the Kleck 2001a chapter that the National Academies cites that gives a 500,000 estimate. In fact, the range of estimates that Kleck survey gives ranges from 645,000 for just handguns to 3.7 million for all firearms. The 500,000 survey is likely the Peter D. Hart Research Associates survey that Kleck cites, but Hart’s survey indicated there there were about 645,000 defensive gun uses and that survey involves just handguns. How the NAS report used the Kleck chapter to get a 500,000 estimate is never explained.
The bottom line is that the CDC restored its previous language, but that language misleadingly summarizes the National Academies report and omits important qualifications that the report itself provides. There is no warning that the lower NCVS-based estimates were “difficult to interpret because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Even if you accept that the CDCs 60,000 low estimate is rounding down the lowest NCVS and ignore that they don’t put in the NAS warning on using those numbers, their high estimate of 2.5 million is the average of the national surveys and not the top range of the estimates of 3.7 million. Why round down the lowest NCVS estimate (which is problematic to include to begin with) and pick the average of the other surveys?
What is shown at the CDC
What was in the 2013 National Academies of Sciences report.
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