An unpublished Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study confirms Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck’s findings of more than two million defensive handgun uses (DGUs) per year.
Since the early 1990s, Kleck has maintained that there is a minimum of 760,000 DGUs annually. That is his low estimate; Kleck and research partner Marc Gertz have contended the actual number is closer to 2.5 million.
Kleck reaffirmed his numbers on February 17, 2015, explaining that while plenty of naysayers have criticized his findings, none have been able to offer empirical evidence to counter them.
Now, a CDC study conducted on data from 1996, 1997, and 1998 has been uncovered. The study, which was never released to the public, shows approximately 2.46 million DGUs per year.
Kleck summarized the CDC findings:
In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted large-scale national surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU). They never released the findings, or even acknowledged they had studied the topic. I obtained the unpublished raw data and computed the prevalence of DGU. CDC’s findings indicated that an average of 2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense in each of the years from 1996 through 1998 – almost exactly confirming the estimate for 1992 of Kleck and Gertz (1995). Possible reasons for CDC’s suppression of these findings are discussed.
On April 20, 2018, Reason magazine quoted Kleck’s reaction to the unpublished CDC findings; he explained that a figure of 2.46 million DGUs a year “[implies] that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they were used offensively by criminals.”
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.
“… guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they were used offensively by criminals.”
Incomplete.
How many of those criminals were KILLED by those victims???
Obviously kept out of the news….the media is our enemy….and their owners owners.
I’ve heard this statistic before, but it’s nice to see it confirmed by the CDC. It knocks the legs out from under disarmament arguments.
However, the idiots abound.
“Many on Twitter have praised Shaw, and noted that — contrary to the oft-repeated claims of the NRA — he was unarmed when he managed to stop the attacker.
The only thing that stopped the Waffle House shooter was a good guy with no gun.
— Allan Brauer (@allanbrauer) April 22, 2018
The waffle house shooting shows up the NRA’s argument that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, no it doesn’t it just takes a good guy #JamesShaw#hero. When are the politicians going to act to stop these killings #GunReformNow#GunControlNow
— attilla the hun (@Attilla_dehun) April 22, 2018
Myth: The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun Reality: An unarmed civilian stops the Nashville Waffle house shooter”
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2018/04/22/good-guy-with-no-gun-james-shaw-jr-disarmed-waffle-house-shooter/23417583/
You know, I read another article on this that was linked at WRH, and it mentioned this guy Shaw taking the gun, “as he did earlier this year”
I thought it was impossible that the same guy could have disarmed 2 mass shooters, but that’s what the article implied. (probably a mistake)
I have to feed the dog before I get bitten on the leg.