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What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

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Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#41

Post by burfog »

markisus wrote: post #39

I wonder what the author means when he says the CDC did not report their results? In the final paragraph he says, "Regardless of how the decision was made, it was a disservice to the American people, who paid for the survey and the information it yielded, but who were not allowed to see it and judge its worth for themselves." Indeed, it's wrong for government agencies to suppress publicly funded data sets, especially…

The FOIA would be the obvious path to this data. You can get all sorts of government data that way. Often the biggest trouble is knowing that the information exists. If you don't know it exists, you can't ask for it.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#42

Post by maxerickson »

SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #38
kharms wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns have an amplifier effect on suicides, domestic violence.

Guns have a force multiplier effect on self defense. Guess which one of our arguments happens more frequently?

Pretty sure it's domestic violence.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#43

Post by benjohnson »

xt00 wrote: post #35
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guns don’t cause injury and disability more than they prevent it. Sorry, but that’s the truth. We have 340,000,000 people, more guns than that. And 10,000 homicides where the vast majority are drug and gang related. We have a problem, but it’s not with guns. Edit: more truth, more downvotes. I’m curious as to why there is such effort against an enumerated right - when putting even 1/10th the effort into fighting hear…

Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. Yes crimes still occur but are much less lethal with knives or other weapons compared to guns. So saying guns cause less injury vs preventing it sounds like it could be true but also is a symptom of our current culture in the US that has zillions of guns.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates.

As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels.

I would say that this observation is relevant because the argument for citizens being armed is to curtail the abuse of a powerful government.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#44

Post by [deleted] »

opportune wrote: post #8

I would like to know the contexts behind these defensive gun usages before I come to a conclusion. It could be that a significant portion are "empty" uses (e.g. brandishing a gun when scared by a weird noise at night when nobody was there), not actually defensive / used in a situation where the gun greatly escalated the situation (e.g. someone cuts you off in traffic and you "defend" your space), etc. - even though t…

[deleted]

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#45

Post by markisus »

burfog wrote: post #41
markisus wrote: post #39

I wonder what the author means when he says the CDC did not report their results? In the final paragraph he says, "Regardless of how the decision was made, it was a disservice to the American people, who paid for the survey and the information it yielded, but who were not allowed to see it and judge its worth for themselves." Indeed, it's wrong for government agencies to suppress publicly funded data sets, especially…

The FOIA would be the obvious path to this data. You can get all sorts of government data that way. Often the biggest trouble is knowing that the information exists. If you don't know it exists, you can't ask for it.

I was able to find this page through Google search: https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavior...

and I found the survey question by searching with the filter Question > contains > "firearm."

At this point I'm tempted to say that the author's complaints with respect to data suppression are exaggerated.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#46

Post by glenra »

opportune wrote: post #8

I would like to know the contexts behind these defensive gun usages before I come to a conclusion. It could be that a significant portion are "empty" uses (e.g. brandishing a gun when scared by a weird noise at night when nobody was there), not actually defensive / used in a situation where the gun greatly escalated the situation (e.g. someone cuts you off in traffic and you "defend" your space), etc. - even though t…

The CDC study being discussed in this paper didn't followup but according to OP Kleck's other studies did - in Kleck's studies when people said they had a DGU they were asked to elaborate on the circumstances so this could be evaluated. By his analysis about 9% of reported DGUs didn't qualify as defensive, so he applied that as a modifier when comparing the new results to his.

On the flip side there also exist reasons to think the CDC undercounts DGUs, most notably that they only asked people who had a gun in the home if they had used a gun in self-defense. If respondents only had a gun at work or used someone else's gun or used to have a gun at home but no longer did, they weren't asked the DGU question. Also, most DGUs are arguably illegal so reporting one is reporting having engaged in illegal activity.

If you want to make the data more accurate you don't get to just apply reasons to think it's an overcount, you also need to apply reasons to think it's an undercount. (On the whole, Kleck's estimates seem pretty conservative.)

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#47

Post by contoraria »

Density wrote: post #18

CDC can't study gun violence because they are out to ban guns. Quote from the CDC head Mark Rosenberg from 1994: “We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly and banned.” This isn't an okay attitude for a government employee to have because the bill of rights guarantees all Americans the right to bear arms.

so like, I can arm my front lawn with a nuke silo? Good to know. It's already forbidden to carry concealed, or even openly.

Maybe literal bear arms, were meant? With lawyers and legalese you never know. Please define to bear if you care to.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#49

Post by glenra »

markisus wrote: post #45
burfog wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The FOIA would be the obvious path to this data. You can get all sorts of government data that way. Often the biggest trouble is knowing that the information exists. If you don't know it exists, you can't ask for it.

I was able to find this page through Google search: https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavior... and I found the survey question by searching with the filter Question > contains > "firearm." At this point I'm tempted to say that the author's complaints with respect to data suppression are exaggerated.

Kleck's complaint is that when the data was originally collected two decades ago, CDC researchers could have calculated an estimated number of DGUs from the raw data and reported summary statistics relating to it, but didn't do so. They did do public estimates for other categories, just not this one. Kleck thinks they didn't release any analysis of this data because they didn't like the conclusion. (Which seems plausible but would be a hard thing to prove)

Kleck wrote this report once he realized the raw unanalyzed response data (which is what you found) had at some point become available at the CDC site so he could do his own analysis.

>I was able to find this page through Google search

You didn't need to - Kleck's data source is the very first item in the "References" section of OP. It was:

> Centers for Disease Control (CDC). 2018. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System website at https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm. Accessed 2-14-18.

Re: What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?

#50

Post by reitanqild »

benjohnson wrote: post #43
xt00 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. Yes crimes still occur but are much less lethal with knives or other weapons compared to guns. So saying guns cause less injury vs preventing it sounds like it could be true but also is a symptom of our current culture in the US that has zillions of guns.

>>Many countries that have essentially completely banned guns somehow have also managed to have low injury / death rates. As long as you go back only a few years - many of those same countries have experienced genocides and holocausts from their powerful governments acting against a disarmed citizenry and driving their long-term violent death rates to astronomical levels. I would say that this observation is relevant…

Sadly this is true.

This is what guns are supposed to protect you against.

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