Gun Control Groups Got CDC To Scrub ‘Good Guys With Guns’ Emails and Study

A federal agency was involved in helping gun control advocates to discredit a study. law-abiding firearms owners They can help you protect yourself millions of times per annum, according to a report.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention After gun control advocates claimed that it made it harder to pass gun laws, (CDC) removed a reference about the study. Site supporting the Second Amendment The Reload reported The White House and the powerful Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin were involved in arranging a series of meetings where gun control advocates persuaded the agency to conceal the study.

“[T]hat 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again,” Mark Bryant is the head of the Gun Violence Archive, wrote Following a meeting, CDC officials should be contacted. “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.”

Update: The CDC never sent any actual letters @teamtrace The statement it prepared in response to the publication’s initial inquiry about its decision to modify the language on the agency’s website regarding defensive gun use, and the lobbying campaign that underpins it. https://t.co/24igo5iePL

— The Reload (@TheReloadSite) December 29, 2022

Bryant’s email was one of a handful obtained by The Reload which illustrate how gun control lobbyists were triggered by the study by Florida State University Criminology Professor Gary Kleck. The CDC reviewed several studies on defensive gun use. Kleck’s findings represented the upper end of estimates for how many times lawful gun owners defended themselves.

Bryant complained that Kleck’s estimate was “misinformation” and should be eliminated from the CDC’s website because gun-rights advocates were using it as ammunition for their Second Amendment arguments.

The CDC originally supported the study and included it in its initial listing. “Fast Facts: Firearm Violence Prevention” Its website. The agency promised that it would revise this section by 2022 following a virtual meeting with gun control advocates on September 15, 20,21. According to an email obtained by The Reload on December 10, 2020, the agency said they had received an email from them confirming their promise.

“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, wrote in the email. “We will also make some edits to the content we discussed that I think will address the concerns you and other partners have raised.”

References to studies on defensive gun use were removed from the site in 2022.

“Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending on the questions asked, populations studied, timeframe, and other factors related to study design,” The site is now updated. “Given the wide variability in estimates, additional research is necessary to understand defensive gun use prevalence, frequency, circumstances, and outcomes.”

The CDC did not respond to The Reload’s request for comment on the decision. Durbin spokeswoman Emily Hampsten told the site her boss’s only involvement was “simply connecting” “stakeholder organizations” Contact a federal agency.

Kleck called it the decision “blatant censorship” meant to distort the debate about gun rights.

“It’s not complicated,” Kleck stated that this was yet another example of how politicized the CDC is.

The CDC’s decision to remove all estimates on defensive gun uses was first reported by The Trace, a pro-gun control site that disputed Kleck’s scholarship. The Reload obtained the emails cited in The Reload through a Freedom of Information Act request for the California Rifle & Pistol Association.

Bryant’s group is one of several gun control advocacy organizations that have used a broad definition of “mass shootings” To portray them as very common in America. According to their definition, a mass shooting is when four or more people are injured in an incident involving firearms. Mass shootings occur 10 times more often than the standard definition, which requires at least four fatalities.

Gun Violence Archive is conservative when it comes to delineating defensive gun use incidents. It only counts incidents that appear in media reports and police reports. Gun Violence Archive estimates that there are less than 2000 cases per year of defensive gun usage.

In response to a Trace query, the CDC attempted to explain why it had removed defensive gun use statistics. However, this was never done. The CDC stated that the range of estimates was too wide to include them. “raise more questions than it answered.”

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