Defensive gun use

Right.

And they put up, uh, a link to the report on their website, and it was up there until 2022 when the Biden administration took it down.

Uh, Freedom of Information Act requests showed that email exchanges between gun control groups and, uh, the Biden administration and the Centers for Disease Control had the gun control groups complaining that having that information up there about the rate of defensive gun uses was making it more difficult for them to go and pass the types of gun control regulations that they wanted to get passed.

Um, so Trump now, uh, in July, put the original post back up.

Oh.

Uh, but since then, they've more recently corrected it because they A post that was originally up that was taken down said that there were between 60,000 and 2.5 million defensive gun uses that occurred each year.

In fact, if you read the National Academy of Sciences report that the CDC helped fund, uh, they say you can't use that lower number because they don't directly ask people about whether or not a gun was used defensively.

Uh, that the low estimate should be about 500,000, and that's just for handguns.

Here's what they removed, but it's now been put back.

Defensive gun use.

Although definitions of defensive gun use vary, it is generally defined as the use of a firearm to protect and defend oneself, family, other people, and/or property against crime or victimization.

Estimates of defensive gun use vary depending upon the questions asked, population studied, time frame, and other factors related to study design.

The report Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence indicates a range of sixty thousand to two point five million defensive uses of guns each year.

Close quote.

I did a documentary about guns and defensive use of guns.

I interviewed a criminologist named Gary Kleck.

And so i- in May, 2022, the Centers for Disease Control, uh, took down the information from the National Academy of Sciences report on the rate of defensive gun uses.

And that stayed down until, uh, a couple months ago, when the Trump administration put the defensive gun use information back up.

And now, uh, they've even corrected, uh, part of what was up there before.

When they, uh, when the Obama administration had put up the information on defensive gun uses, they had said the number of defensive gun uses each year range from 2.5 million to 60,000.

Uh, but if you actually read the National Academy of Sciences report, they say that those lower estimates were illegitimate, because they didn't directly ask people in the survey data that was being used, uh, whether they had used a gun defensively.

And so the Centers for Disease Control, y- the, the National Academy of Sciences report actually said that defensive gun uses range from about, estimates range from about 500,000 to 2.5 million, and the 500,000 was just for, uh, handguns.

It wasn't for defensive use by all guns.

And so the Trump administration now has, uh, has-