The CDC is once again acknowledging what gun-control advocates would rather ignore: Americans use firearms to defend themselves and others.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has restored information on defensive gun use to its firearm injury and death webpage, pointing to research estimating between 60,000 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.
The range is enormous, and researchers have long disagreed over exactly how defensive gun use should be measured.
But that’s not the whole story.
The figures disappeared from the CDC website in 2022 after gun-control advocates pressured the agency over how it presented defensive gun use.
Now they’re back.
Defensive Gun Use Is Real
The CDC acknowledges that defensive gun use can involve protecting oneself, family members, other people, or property against crime or victimization.
Its current page points to a National Academies report citing estimates ranging from 60,000 to 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually.
That doesn’t mean 2.5 million is the definitive number.
Different studies use different methodologies, and estimates vary dramatically depending on what researchers count as a defensive gun use.
But those disagreements don’t erase the underlying reality: Americans do use firearms defensively.
“Gun-control activists want every firearm debate to begin and end with criminal misuse while ignoring the Americans who rely on firearms to protect themselves and their families,” said Texas Gun Rights President Chris McNutt. “The government shouldn’t manipulate the public debate by hiding evidence simply because that evidence is inconvenient to the anti-gun agenda.”
Why Were the Numbers Removed?
That’s the question the CDC’s reversal puts back under the spotlight.
In 2022, gun-control advocates challenged the higher defensive-use estimates and pressed the CDC to change its website.
Publicly reported correspondence showed Gun Violence Archive Executive Director Mark Bryant arguing that the 2.5 million estimate needed to be “killed” and pointing to its use against gun-control legislation.
The CDC subsequently removed the numerical range and replaced it with language emphasizing uncertainty surrounding defensive gun use estimates.
Supporters of that decision argued the higher estimates were unreliable.
Critics saw something much more troubling: political pressure influencing how a federal public-health agency presented research involving firearms.
Americans Deserve the Full Picture
The debate over the exact number of defensive gun uses isn’t going away.
Some estimates count only a relatively narrow category of incidents. Broader surveys can capture encounters where a firearm was displayed or threatened but never fired and police were never called.
Those methodological differences matter.
But so does presenting the entire picture.
Gun-control advocates routinely cite murders, suicides, accidents, and criminal misuse of firearms when demanding new restrictions.
Defensive firearm use belongs in that discussion, too.
Americans deserve access to the evidence — including evidence that doesn’t advance the gun-control lobby’s preferred narrative.
For Texans, the principle is even simpler.
The right to keep and bear arms includes the right to defend yourself and your family.
Chip in to help as Texas Gun Rights continues fighting to protect that right from politicians, bureaucrats, and gun-control activists who want to diminish it.
