Defensive Gun Use, The CDC, And The Media Cone of Silence

If you are aware of this recent story about the CDC and defensive gun use you are either well-read or a right-wing nut-job (I say this as one who lately has no time to read):

CDC Survey On Defensive Gun Use Was Never Publicized

By Virginia Kruta

Defensive gun use (DGU) happens more regularly in the United States than gun crimes, according to data the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) never publicized.

Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck has been arguing that point for a quarter of a century, saying that his own research led him to believe that DGU was far more prevalent than gun-control advocates claim.

The CDC’s data, collected a few years after Kleck’s survey, appears to corroborate his findings, Reason.com reported. The question asked in the CDC survey addressed the use or threatened use of a firearm to deter a crime. “During the last 12 months, have you confronted another person with a firearm, even if you did not fire it, to protect yourself, your property, or someone else?”

No spoilers here! But lets cut over to Reason.com:

CDC, in Surveys It Never Bothered Making Public, Provides More Evidence That Plenty of Americans Innocently Defend Themselves with Guns

CDC surveys in the 1990s, never publicly reported, indicate nearly 2.5 million defensive uses of guns a year. That matches the results of Gary Kleck's controversial surveys, and it indicates more defensive than offensive uses of guns.

Lest you wonder, yes - in 2013, following an executive order from Obama, the CDC did some studies on gun violence, including a look at defensive gun use ("DGU"). And yes, the report got some attention - here is Will Saletan at Slate in a review of the findings:

7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was 'used' by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

So as of 2013 the CDC was willing to include a ballpark that encompassed their 1990s estimates.

And why is this news? Well, in one sense it is not - as best I can tell, and I am relying on their search engine, the flailing NY Times has mentioned neither the latest revelations nor the 2013 report on defensive gun use. FWIW, I did find this March 2018 piece calling for more CDC studies. The intro is oddly off-kilter:

Guns in the home protect families.

For decades, that has been an essential part of the National Rifle Association’s mantra in defending firearms ownership, repeated at congressional hearings, in advertisements and on T-shirts.

Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who once headed research on firearm violence at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wondered if there was any evidence backing the N.R.A.’s assertion.

“So we looked at the question, does having a gun at home protect your family or not?” Dr. Rosenberg recalled.

He was amazed by the answer. The landmark study in 1993 showed that bringing a gun into the home puts everyone at much greater risk.

“They were saying if you want to keep your family safe, if you are a real man, you will have a gun at home,” Dr. Rosenberg said. “Bringing the gun not only didn’t protect you, it put you at much, much greater risk.”

To this day, gun rights advocates dispute the study’s findings. The N.R.A. pushed Congress in 1995 to stop the C.D.C. from spending taxpayer money on research that advocated gun control. Congress then passed the Dickey Amendment in 1996, and cut funding that effectively ended the C.D.C.’s study of gun violence as a public health issue.

 

"To this day gun rights advocates dispute the study’s findings". As did the CDC seemingly, then and in 2013.

Well. No mention by the Times of the concern that the process will be politicized and the "wrong" results buried. Their national debate on guns never seems to wonder off script.

However, the Todd Frankel of the WaPO did address this in 2015 - his gist - the 2013 study reviewed the current literature (their high-end defensive gun use statistics seem to come from Kleck) but since it called for more study we can't really discuss it. Uh huh.

ERRATA: As an illustration here is the last month's Google News top hits for "Centers for Disease Control defensive gun use". Good luck finding any legacy media at all.

 And continuing...

Comments

[henry]

only 31 names redacted.

[Ignatz Ratzkiwatzki]

--Anyone else with littermates see the same behavior?--

Yeah. My brother.

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

Jack,

I see similar behavior with my dog Maggie and my daughter's oldest dog, Pibby. Both are females, different breeds.

The dogs are in the habit of getting a small treat when they come in. (Probably we created a monster, but Maggie loves being outside and getting her in is sometimes necessary, like when I leave the house.)Pibby thinks if Maggie gets a treat she should, too, even if she hasn't been outside.

I have to give the treats in the right order. Otherwise Maggie will go after Pibby like she has gotten the only treat. I have to give them in separate rooms, with Maggie first.

[henry]

U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Thursday defended his decision not to appoint a second special prosecutor to investigate Republicans' concerns about the FBI by noting that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe had already taken on "a life of its own."

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/27/us-attorney-general-sessions-says-mueller-probe-has-taken-on-a-life-of-its-own.html?__source=twitter%7Cmain

[Extraneus]

I was happy to read that McCabe was helping Mueller stack his team with partisan Democrats, which puts an end to the Mueller white hat theory.

[Extraneus]

And now Sessions is attacking Mueller twice in two days? Great!

[henry]

new thread

[Miss Marple the Deplorable]

Donald J. Trump
‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump
3m3 minutes ago

Just Out: House Intelligence Committee Report released. “No evidence” that the Trump Campaign “colluded, coordinated or conspired with Russia.” Clinton Campaign paid for Opposition Research obtained from Russia- Wow! A total Witch Hunt! MUST END NOW!

[narciso79]

Shirley they can't be serious, I can guess at some of the reduction, milan and Waldman, but the rest are convenient obfuscation.

[JM Hanes]

Perhaps even Captain Hate will forgive me for this bit of royal news, which I find terribly amusing. Oddly enough, it comes from that hot-off-the-presses book about the Clinton campaign:

[Amy Chozik] has revealed how Hilary Clinton’s only daughter used the birth of Prince George in 2013, as a model for how to cope with the arrival of her own daughter a year later…. Chelsea Clinton and her aides supposedly studied the British Royal Family during the Duchess of Cambridge’s first birth, to see how they handled the press. The claims come side-by-side with a revelation that Chelsea apparently saw herself as Kate’s equal, implying that the Clinton’s be the answer to America’s version of a royal family.

It's the schadenfreude, stupid! HaHaHaHaHa!

[sbwaters]

part of whose charge was to admonish a monarch who failed in his duties or uprightness, although that was a fraught and uneven process.

JMH, glad to see you mention this, too often lost in the long history of Confucius, purposely overlooked by the powerful.

[JM Hanes]

Well., of course, there's a new thread! It's the karma, stupid!

[JimNorCal]

NEW

[Eye Doctor]

Mueller wears the blackest of black hats.

[lyle]

Insty links to great Kyle Smith review of the new book about Rodham’s Rancid Race to the WH. The dipshit NYT reporter, Chozick, seems to barely grok what pretty much all of us knew about that horrid [redacted]: she hated campaigning and couldn’t understand why she just didn’t get handed the job that she thought she so richly deserved.

🖕you, Hilligula.

Now, please stay front and center of the criminal enterprise masquerading as a political party that despises you, too.