According to a report from Law Enforcement Today, recent revelations have exposed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for allegedly suppressing data on defensive gun use (DGU). This action has ignited debates over the transparency and potential politicization of the agency’s research on gun policy and public health.

The CDC, which studies various factors contributing to injury and mortality including firearm incidents, has been criticized for omitting defensive gun use statistics from its public communications. Despite commissioning a study from The National Academies’ Institute of Medicine and National Research Council, which recognized DGUs as a “common occurrence,” the CDC chose to exclude these statistics following pressure from gun-control advocates.

Documents obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests revealed that individuals such as Mark Bryant of the Gun Violence Archive, Devin Hughes of GVPedia, and Po Murray engaged with top CDC officials. They were introduced by the White House and Senator Dick Durbin’s office and pressed the CDC to downplay DGU frequencies, which range from estimates of 60,000 to 2.5 million annually in the U.S.

Mark Bryant was particularly outspoken, vehemently opposing the highest estimates of DGU. He was quoted in correspondence saying, “that statistic needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again. It is highly misleading, used out of context, and holds zero value even as an outlier in honest discussions surrounding DGUs.”

Despite initial reluctance, the CDC ultimately removed references to DGUs from its publications, a move that has been perceived as aligning the agency more with gun-control advocacy groups than with unbiased scientific inquiry. This has raised concerns about the CDC’s commitment to providing comprehensive and unbiased data.

Gary Kleck, professor emeritus at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice and a long-time researcher of DGUs, criticized the CDC’s actions, suggesting they indicate the agency is a tool of gun-control advocates rather than a neutral body. Kleck, whose research supports at least 760,000 DGUs annually, emphasized the importance of rigorous methodology and empirical evidence in academic research.

This situation highlights the ongoing tension between scientific research and political influence, particularly in the contentious arena of gun policy. Critics argue that the CDC’s actions compromise its credibility as an evidence-based institution and call for greater transparency and accountability in its research practices.

“CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups. It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do,” Kleck told Eddie Killian, the author of the Law Enforcement Today article.

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27 COMMENTS

  1. All the alphabet agencies have been weaponized and turned against the American people in favor of the tyrants.

    Nuke the site from orbit.

    • Nuke ’em from the House of Representatives.

      No funding…no alphabet agency.

      Let’s jettison funding for the entire Administrative State and use the savings to pay down the debt.

  2. Trust me, if everyone shot had medical coverage the CDC could care less.
    No sturgeon wants to work for free.

  3. No, no, no. This can’t be right for two reasons.
    1. We’re constantly told the gov simply can’t study gun use stats because it’s against some law so there can’t possibly be any data to scrub.

    2. The CDC would never, NEVER, manipulate, obfuscate or misrepresent data so important that is affects lives and legislation. Just look at the super honest and trustworthy job they did with COVID.

    I fully embrace and accept whatever agencies of the government are telling me to embrace and accept.

    • By golly your ready to join, now the mantra.
      Joseph Robinett Biden is The Greatest President America Has or Ever Will Have.
      Joseph Robinett Biden is The Greatest President America Has or Ever Will Have.
      Joseph Robinett Biden is The Greatest President America Has or Ever Will Have.
      Forever and ever Amen.

    • I shouldn’t laugh so hard at this as I did. Now I have my supervisor laughing at it as well. Thank you it is oddly comforting to know most people rightfully dismiss manipulative data sets.

      • I’m with you, SAFE, except I can’t get into trouble for laughing because I’m the boss here on this side of the business and I can laugh all I want to.

        That being said, I see a sign on the filing cabinet next to my desk. My sister-in-law works the front counter here, and one day one of our customers (“Jim”) who is a real funster came past the counter to my office while I was working on an estimate, and we had a good joke/sob story session. She wrote up a sign, pushed past Jim into my office, and taped it to the cabinet. “Absolutely NO Loitering! ZERO, NONE, NADA, ZIP! (this means you)” He walked back out, and asked her if this meant he couldn’t have a piece of chocolate (we keep a bowl of candy on the counter). Jim now knows to grab the candy before he comes back.

        If we don’t laugh, we’ll cry, eh?

  4. Maybe the CDC should be looking into opoid related deaths and vax side effects not firearms deaths.

    • Funny my health department liaison says exactly the same thing, also mentioned cancer rates in people under 50.

    • In 2020, more than 56,000 people ages 18 and older died in synthetic opioid-related incidents, according to data made available through the CDC’s online mortality database. In 2021, nearly 70,000 people 18 and older died in synthetic opioid-related incidents.

      Fentanyl-related deaths are coded as synthetic opioid-related deaths. Fentanyl comprises approximately 90% of the synthetic opioids category.

      In 2023, ages 18 – 45, around 112 million people died due to opioid drug overdose.

      Federal researchers now say drug overdoses are a leading cause of death among young Americans age 18-45 and have also spiked as a killer of pregnant women.

      • correction for: “…around 112 million…”

        should have been…

        …around 112 thousand…

  5. It’s the Center for Disease Control. Are firearms a contagion? Wait, maybe they are. More and more keep showing up in my safes. Maybe they’re just breeding. Randall knives do the same thing.

    • It’s lead poisoning, and therefore a “disease.” “Gun violence” is an “epidemic disease.”

  8. Some government agency manipulating data for their own agenda? And anyone is surprised?

  9. “of the Gun Violence Archive”
    Gun violence archive is wholly owned by Bloomberg control lobby. They have claimed that the only DGU are where the defender shoots and kills the criminal and then wins a self defense claim. That is obviously the tiniest fraction of a percent of crimes prevented by a good guy with a gun. A good guy just showing a firearm likely prevents hundreds of thousands if not millions of crimes in the US every single year. Oh and Joe Biden himself said racking a shotgun makes bad guys run away. Since they are trying to define DGU as only where an intruder or perp is shot and killed, how is Joe Biden’s example valid?

    • Okay, does that mean you should always announce your willingness to defend your home from an intruder by shooting him? That does seem to be what they are advocating. Awfully bloodthirsty of them!

  10. At this point in our social/political cycle, anyone who believes ANYTHING coming out of a government agency is either an idiot, a fool, or a propagandist (MajorLiar, that would be YOU), or . . . all of the above.

    ALL statistics (yes, on both sides, I agree) relating to guns, gun use, gun crimes, etc. are sliced, diced, and minced to achieve a desired result. Sometimes, our “gut reactions” get closer to the truth than fancy, “peer-reviewed” statistics. My “gut reaction” tells me that (i) people have been reluctant (for VERY valid reasons) to deploy firearms in self-defense, but that reluctance is decreasing as police become less present/effective, (ii) most folks (especially noobs) that arm themselves don’t devote adequate time to familiarizing themselves/training with their weapons, (iii) the likelihood of the presence of firearms, even in the hands of noobs, definitely deters crime. Statistics that seem to contradict that “gut feel” can take all the seats.

    I carry because I can, because I am more comfortable being armed than not, and because my life and the lives of my family/friends are more important to me than the life of a scumbag criminal. It would devastate me to end another human being’s life . . . but it would devastate me a whole lot more if some scumbag ended the life of a member of my family.

    Sorry; not sorry.

    • “At this point in our social/political cycle, anyone who believes ANYTHING coming out of a government agency is either an idiot, a fool, or a propagandist (MajorLiar, that would be YOU), or . . . all of the above.” That, MajorLiar, would also be you.

  11. One thing I never see about guns is the number of crimes committed by the punks with illegal/criminal guns and by those done by honest law abiding citizens.

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