Unpublished CDC Study Confirms More than 2 Million Defensive Handgun Uses Annually

An unpublished Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) study confirms Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck’s findings of more than two million defensive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. However, that is his low estimate. Kleck and research partner Marc Gertz have contended the actual number is closer to 2.5 million, reported Breitbart.

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.

On April 20, 2018, Reason magazine quoted Kleck’s reaction to the unpublished CDC findings; he explained that a figure of 2.46 million DGUs a year “[implies] that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they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.”

According to Reason magazine, for those who wonder exactly how purely scientific CDC researchers are likely to be about issues of gun violence that implicate policy, Kleck notes that “CDC never reported the results of those surveys, does not report on their website any estimates of DGU frequency, and does not even acknowledge that they ever asked about the topic in any of their surveys.”


While the surveys specifically omitted weapons used during the course and scope of duty, Law Enforcement Today’s editor-in-chief, Jim McNeff, provided details that support these findings.

In his article, “Institutional Injustice Is a Lie,” McNeff provided personal evidence:

While working undercover I have experienced potential lethal encounters on no fewer than three occasions. First, I had a shotgun pulled on me by a (suspect) who wanted me out of his “hood” in Downey. Second, I had a person try to carjack my undercover vehicle until I pulled my handgun to defend myself in Santa Ana. Third, I had to pull my weapon on a person who challenged my presence by threatening great bodily injury since I was on “his turf”—which was the public housing projects in Los Angeles.

During each occasion McNeff was dressed in civilian clothing. The suspect in each case was not the intended target of the undercover assignment. Thus, bad guys in these gang-infested areas viewed him as an unarmed “victim.” Yet, he was armed with a handgun and able to defend himself during each crime.

https://www.lawenforcementtoday.com/unpublished-cdc-study-confirms-2-million-def...

Day 230 of 2019 - 262 mass shootings in the US.

Oh dear.

One point not understood is that these 'defensive acts' were against OTHER PEOPLE WITH GUNS.

longweekend58 wrote on Aug 19^th, 2019 at 10:14am:


Exactly.

It goes right over the gun-nuts' heads though.

One point not understood is that these 'defensive acts' were against OTHER PEOPLE WITH GUNS.

it is a classic circular argument.

In other stories, a report from Australia shows 200,000 cases of 'defensive uses of fists'.  against other people with fists.

One point not understood is that these 'defensive acts' were against OTHER PEOPLE WITH GUNS.