The Centers for Disease Control’s reputation took a beating from its handling of the Chinese flu fiasco. Now, reporting by Stephen Gutowski at The Reload has taken another chuck out of the agency’s damaged credibility.
The scientists at the CDC have been busying themselves air brushing their website to remove inconvenient facts that get in the way of the gun control industry’s agenda, an agenda that’s shared and pushed by Joe Biden’s Democrat party.
FOIA’d documents obtained by The Reload show that gun control advocates objected to the CDC listing the number of defensive gun uses (DGUs) on their ‘Fast Facts” page about so-called gun violence prevention.
Mark Bryant, who operates the Gun Violence Archive website, lobbied CDC management to drop the DGU numbers cited on the website. After a meeting, he wrote this to the Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention:
“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again. 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.”
Here’s what the “Fast Facts” page showed back in December 2021.
After lobbying from Bryant, the Newtown Action Alliance, GVPedia, and others, here’s the same section of the CDC’s website today.
In short, they scrubbed data that indicated that, depending on who’s doing the counting, Americans defend themselves using firearms anywhere between 60,000 and 2.5 million times a year. But that objective truth was simply too much for the Biden administration’s allies in the gun control industry to stomach. It made their job of selling more limits on Second Amendment rights more difficult, so they got the CDC to scrub it.
Long story short: Americans can’t trust the CDC.
From The Reload . . .
The lobbying campaign spanned months and culminated with a private meeting between CDC officials and three advocates last summer, a collection of emails obtained by The Reload show. Introductions from the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s (D., Ill.) office helped the advocates reach top officials at the agency after their initial attempt to reach out went unanswered. The advocates focused their complaints on the CDC’s description of its review of studies that estimated defensive gun uses (DGU) happen between 60,000 and 2.5 million times per year in the United States–attacking criminologist Gary Kleck’s work establishing the top end of the range.
“[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.”
Bryant, who runs the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), argued Kleck’s estimate has been damaging to the political prospects of passing new gun restrictions and should be eliminated from the CDC’s website.
“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.”
Despite initially standing behind the description in the defensive gun use section of its “fast facts” website on gun violence, the CDC backtracked after a previously-undisclosed virtual meeting with the advocates on September 15th, 2021.
“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 December 10th. “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, but none of the emails the agency released related to it did not show any attempts to obtain other outside points of view either before or after the meeting with the gun-control advocates. Hannah Bristol of the White House Office of Public Engagement did not respond to a request for comment on her role in the discussions beyond what the emails reveal. Emily Hampsten, Senator Durbin’s Communications Director, told The Reload their office’s only involvement was “simply connecting” “stakeholder organizations” with a federal agency as part of the “basic function of our work.”
Read the full report from The Reload here.
If Republicans want to, this little stunt – coupled with the CDC’s handling of the COVID fiasco – would result in a lot fewer taxpayer dollars funding the CDC’s politicized “gun violence” research. But don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.
They have to lie. It is that simple. Gun control has no benefits. It doesn’t prevent crime and it doesn’t prevent suicide.
All it has ever done is create a pool of victims. People supporting gun control are soaked in the blood of the innocent and they are happy about it.
“Gun control has no benefits.”
9 out of 10 fascists disagree… 🙁
Make that “11 out of 10” – fits the current conditions better 😆
Naïve liberals and their brain dead excuses, “agree with me” or you’re a facist, racist, homophobe, ……..regardless of the evidence and facts. You ignore the truth, blame a non animate object, and remove all sense of self responsibility.
Control. Like CA’s mandatory 10-day waiting period when purchasing a gunn. When I bought a second one intended to add to my CCW, I was informed that not only did I need to go through the entire NICS/BGC, but wait the 10-day “cooling off” period before picking it up. It’s actually termed by CA as a “cooling off” period, intended to be a buffer to allow an upset person’s emotions to subside so as to prevent suicide or mayhem.
Except that I already had a CA-approved gunn on my hip and was holding a valid CA-approved CCW. If I were to contemplate any nefarious actions, I already had the necessary tool on my person, so waiting 10 days to pick up my new gunn (right after passing the NICS check) was absurd. But hey…Democrats pushed for the gunn control laws including this one. Certainly not based upon logic.
Haz,
What is this ‘logic’ of which you speak??? You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Their goal is obvious, and they are (were?) making progress – disarm the ‘normal’, law-abiding citizen, and let the government and habitual criminals run wild.
Lemme know how that works out for y’all. I’m busy filling my ammo safe.
it’s perfectly logical. Obviously your current gun isn’t suitable for mayhem or suicide; otherwise, you would he (mis)using it for those.purposes now. The gun you desire may be appropriate for those (mis)uses, so you need 10 days to reconsider your actions and let your bloodlust wane.
Ok. It’s 2 minutes closer to midnight.
This is blatant censorship by the government.
Absolutely!! It’s the Dems/RINO’S wanting their Communist Liberal NWO and US Citizens not being able to defend themselves.
CDC needs to be banned along with the FBI and CIA.
And the governemt says there are 5 lights. My response is there are only four.
…nice ST:TNG reference!
I’m wondering why anyone is suprised.
“…Kleck’s estimate has been damaging to the political prospects of passing new gun restrictions…”
removing it from the website does nothing to alter the findings. gun rights orgs may still refer to the earlier material, stressing that to be necessary due to blatant censorship.
Another cause to which I belong has been fighting the CDC for decades. The corruption in that organization is staggering. Whistle blowers report that their data is altered by management for political purposes.
The CDC has earned its name: The Center for Deception and Corruption.
I’ve said this before. It is past time to de-nazify our .gov.
JWM,
AMEN!!
Nothing changes until we defund them which means we have to completely change Congress and the way this country operates. Elon Musk should be the head HR manager for the administrative state. Check out how he’s handling twitter’s abundance of expensive stuff (he’s selling it) and useless employees.
Government agencies at the executive level are highly politicized. Those in there are political appointees and know they have to tow the party line or get dismissed. Facts and science are irrelevant when compared to politics.
I didn’t realize there were agendas beyond “controlling” disease until the WuFlu debacle. After that, Russiagate, and other recent hits, I see no reason to ever trust any part of the federal government. There’s too much money and power at stake. Look at how much money we spend. We’ll never get a handle on the corruption until we stop the extravagant spending.
Those damn anti-science Nazis burning books again.
Come on folks, this surprises you? Remember which anti-science party controls the government. Rochelle Walensky is a spineless administrator who will bow to Democrats who never hesitate to use the tyrant option.
It’s why they like totalitarian regimes because they admire the flexibility of being able to not just beat your opponents (of literally) but to also liquidate them too.
because truth is treason
in the empire of lies
cdc = communist d-chompers
…nice ST:TNG reference!
….damn no-edit button! Sorry for the double post. *:(
Could have saved a ton of internet ink with the line ” Long story short : Americans can’t trust the CDC. ”
… with ANYTHING
Typical gun control fascists. They have to lie and keep the truth from getting out.
Makes one wonder how many other leftists “studies” are based on intentionally false data.
I realized the CDC was a joke with how they handled that flesh eating disease that was spreading several years ago. They operated like they had never dealt with any kind of outbreak before. The complete opposite of how they are portrayed in the movies.
IIRC it has recently been revealed that cee dee cee has been suppressing info/data of DGU use since the early 90s. Lemme see, the ’94 AWB got passed with little dissent shortly after. Coincidence, I think not.
The articles title makes it sound like the CDC gave token resistance to the pressure. We know that ain’t true.. CDC held the book open and handed the eraser to the Gun Liars.
What happened to the 1996 Dickey Amendment? Is this just another instance of we don’t like the law or rule so we will just ignore it and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it? I’m betting they didn’t have to “lobby” too hard to get the anti-gun CDC to change their report
Comments are closed.