7 ms·

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

42 points by tomohawk 9y ago

lainga 9y ago
Why was the CDC asking about firearms?
- wglb 9y ago
  Public health hazard. [Edit] The author, Gary Klek, is a firearm-ownership supporter.
  - daenz 9y ago
    >[Edit] The author, Gary Klek, is a firearm-ownership supporter. Can you state clearly the implication of this?
    - wglb 9y ago
      The wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck talks about his research, advocacy, and testimony.
    - opportune 9y ago
      Perhaps someone who makes a living advocating for gun rights might focus on finding supporting arguments for gun ownership?
      - daenz 9y ago
        If the data is sound, what does it matter what they believe?
        wglb 9y ago
        Check the wikipedia article below. There is not universal agreement amongst researchers.
- glibgil 9y ago
  Epidemiologist study epidemics
- wereHamster 9y ago
  > The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the leading national public health institute of the United States. (source: wikipedia). People dying is a health issue, and it's CDCs job to investigate how to prevent / minimise deaths. Doesn't matter if the health issues come from viruses or guns. They also investigate deaths related to motor vehicle crashes etc. And IIRC they can ask about anything, just not publish it themselves (what a stupid law the americans came up with). So other people getting their hands on those numbers and publishing themselves, why not…
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  The "main goal" of the CDC "is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and internationally" [1]. Guns cause injury and disability. The CDC's work around guns has been an area of "partisan dispute" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention#Gun_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an...
  - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
    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 heart disease which kills 700,000 a year would have such a greater impact?
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - lordnacho 9y ago
      Guy says it's an area of partisan dispute, and you write a post that proves it. Yes, it's partisan. Your facts may be right, but the argument is one sided.
      - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
        It’s not partisan to me, i could care less how fellow gun owners vote. One side has emotional plees, logical fallacies, or stubborn ignorance of the topic - I won’t appologoze for not being on that side.
    - kharms 9y ago
      Guns have an amplifier effect on suicides, domestic violence.
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  They shouldn’t be, but it’s not new. The big fuss about the CDC and guns happened in 92/93/94 when Clinton came in and wanted ammo for his upcoming gun ban proposals. Funded some absolutely junk science that had been almost all entirely discredited. Such gems as “you are X % more likely to die of a gun if you own one” that was based on police reported deaths only where the victim owned a gun then applied to all citizens. The data for these “studies” was never fully released. The 1996 congress came in and slapped the CDC down from being used as a propoganda tool again. The Dickey amendment never banned research as many like to claim - but did ban advocacy of gun bans - imagine that once they couldn’t be used as a tool the junk science stopped. Should the CDC be focused on guns? Explicitly no, but it’s not new. Of the studies since 96, none have found a link to guns and violence or gun ownership and higher death rates. Edit: downvotes for truth, please don’t turn into reddit.
- nonbel 9y ago
  Looks like there are some people trying to use the "anti-smoking" campaign as a blueprint for an "anti-gun" campaign. I found a couple links like this when I searched: http://theconversation.com/public-health-research-reduced-smoking-deaths-it-could-do-the-same-for-gun-violence-60994 http://theconversation.com/public-health-research-reduced-sm... I doubt any "motivated" research like this is going to be good science. It just seems impossible.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
opportune 9y ago
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 these wouldn't technically count according to the wording of the survey, we are still relying on respondents' interpretations of the questions. The author mentions that if anything the rate was underreported, but knowing gun users personally, I find it just as likely that they were willing to overstate their gun use or the utility of their gun as a type of bragadocious machoism. It's true the CDC was obviously quite biased, but the study could have still been flawed
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ColanR 9y ago
  Here's the exact wording of the question: > “During the last 12 months, have you confronted another person with a firearm, even if you did not fire it, to protect yourself, your property, or someone else?” I don't think we should seriously modify those answers with anecdotes of "bragadocious machoism". The article says, "in sum, the surveys used an excellent, carefully worded DGU question, in contrast to the wordings used in so many other surveys".
  - opportune 9y ago
    I know, I read the article. I'm saying that we're relying on respondents' interpretations of "confront another person" and "defend." Given that a small absolute percentage of people replied in the affirmative, I think it's reasonable to assume that some portion of those may have been confused by the question or over interpreted it. I'm not disagreeing with the author, I just would want to see more data. The reason this doesn't 100% pass my sanity check is that the study's figures suggest that ~2m people use gun's defensively every year, which is a very high figure given that there are ~680k violent crimes every year per the study. So I would want to know the distribution of the cases when guns are used defensively, to understand this discrepancy
Alex3917 9y ago
I saw the other day that the percentage of Americans who say they've defended themselves with a gun is lower than the percentage of Americans who say they've been abducted by aliens.
Density 9y ago
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.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > CDC can't study gun violence because they are out to ban guns. Seems to me if that was the concern, removing the CDC head with the problem and then not appointing/confirming one with the same problem would be the solution. I mean, that's like saying we should permanently ban the DoJ from enforcing civil rights law because of Jeff Sessions’s views.
  - Density 9y ago
    Sure let's weaponize all government agencies in our fight against our political rivals. Are we really here already? I thought we'd have another decade at least. Next step political violence.
- contoraria 9y ago
  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.
- RickJWagner 9y ago
  I find it interesting that nobody seems interested in studying the characteristics of people who have trouble with guns versus those who don't. I was born and raised in a midwest state that relies largely on tourism. The pheasant hunting season in particular is a big deal. My family, friends, and just about everybody I knew owned guns. In that context, I knew absolutely nobody who ever used a gun to hurt a human being. And I knew all these people for several decades. Blaming the guns is just wrong. There are other factors at play here. We need to leave the framework (2nd amendment) alone and start working the root cause issues.
jakobegger 9y ago
I find it funny how statisticians obsess over the precise wording of their questions, and then perform elaborate logical deductions from their results, but somehow don’t consider that the only people bothering to answer their surveys are bored people who love talking about themselves...
Passthepeas 9y ago
why has this been flagged?
ColanR 9y ago
Why was this flagged?
- contoraria 9y ago
  I guess some people around here are ... trigger happy.
markisus 9y ago
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 when suppression is due to political affiliations. But then how did the author obtain the data?
- burfog 9y ago
  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.
  - markisus 9y ago
    I was able to find this page through Google search: https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavioral-Risk-Factor-Surveillance-System-BRFSS-H/iuq5-y9ct/data 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.
    - glenra 9y ago
      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 https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm. Accessed 2-14-18.

42 points by tomohawk 9y ago

lainga 9y ago

Why was the CDC asking about firearms?

wglb 9y ago
Public health hazard. [Edit] The author, Gary Klek, is a firearm-ownership supporter.
- daenz 9y ago
  >[Edit] The author, Gary Klek, is a firearm-ownership supporter. Can you state clearly the implication of this?
  - wglb 9y ago
    The wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kleck talks about his research, advocacy, and testimony.
  - opportune 9y ago
    Perhaps someone who makes a living advocating for gun rights might focus on finding supporting arguments for gun ownership?
    - daenz 9y ago
      If the data is sound, what does it matter what they believe?
      - wglb 9y ago
        Check the wikipedia article below. There is not universal agreement amongst researchers.
glibgil 9y ago
Epidemiologist study epidemics
wereHamster 9y ago
> The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the leading national public health institute of the United States. (source: wikipedia). People dying is a health issue, and it's CDCs job to investigate how to prevent / minimise deaths. Doesn't matter if the health issues come from viruses or guns. They also investigate deaths related to motor vehicle crashes etc. And IIRC they can ask about anything, just not publish it themselves (what a stupid law the americans came up with). So other people getting their hands on those numbers and publishing themselves, why not…
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
The "main goal" of the CDC "is to protect public health and safety through the control and prevention of disease, injury, and disability in the US and internationally" [1]. Guns cause injury and disability. The CDC's work around guns has been an area of "partisan dispute" [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention#References https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention#Gun_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an...
- SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
  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 heart disease which kills 700,000 a year would have such a greater impact?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - lordnacho 9y ago
    Guy says it's an area of partisan dispute, and you write a post that proves it. Yes, it's partisan. Your facts may be right, but the argument is one sided.
    - SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
      It’s not partisan to me, i could care less how fellow gun owners vote. One side has emotional plees, logical fallacies, or stubborn ignorance of the topic - I won’t appologoze for not being on that side.
  - kharms 9y ago
    Guns have an amplifier effect on suicides, domestic violence.
SlowRobotAhead 9y ago
They shouldn’t be, but it’s not new. The big fuss about the CDC and guns happened in 92/93/94 when Clinton came in and wanted ammo for his upcoming gun ban proposals. Funded some absolutely junk science that had been almost all entirely discredited. Such gems as “you are X % more likely to die of a gun if you own one” that was based on police reported deaths only where the victim owned a gun then applied to all citizens. The data for these “studies” was never fully released. The 1996 congress came in and slapped the CDC down from being used as a propoganda tool again. The Dickey amendment never banned research as many like to claim - but did ban advocacy of gun bans - imagine that once they couldn’t be used as a tool the junk science stopped. Should the CDC be focused on guns? Explicitly no, but it’s not new. Of the studies since 96, none have found a link to guns and violence or gun ownership and higher death rates. Edit: downvotes for truth, please don’t turn into reddit.
nonbel 9y ago
Looks like there are some people trying to use the "anti-smoking" campaign as a blueprint for an "anti-gun" campaign. I found a couple links like this when I searched: http://theconversation.com/public-health-research-reduced-smoking-deaths-it-could-do-the-same-for-gun-violence-60994 http://theconversation.com/public-health-research-reduced-sm... I doubt any "motivated" research like this is going to be good science. It just seems impossible.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

opportune 9y ago

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 these wouldn't technically count according to the wording of the survey, we are still relying on respondents' interpretations of the questions. The author mentions that if anything the rate was underreported, but knowing gun users personally, I find it just as likely that they were willing to overstate their gun use or the utility of their gun as a type of bragadocious machoism. It's true the CDC was obviously quite biased, but the study could have still been flawed

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ColanR 9y ago
Here's the exact wording of the question: > “During the last 12 months, have you confronted another person with a firearm, even if you did not fire it, to protect yourself, your property, or someone else?” I don't think we should seriously modify those answers with anecdotes of "bragadocious machoism". The article says, "in sum, the surveys used an excellent, carefully worded DGU question, in contrast to the wordings used in so many other surveys".
- opportune 9y ago
  I know, I read the article. I'm saying that we're relying on respondents' interpretations of "confront another person" and "defend." Given that a small absolute percentage of people replied in the affirmative, I think it's reasonable to assume that some portion of those may have been confused by the question or over interpreted it. I'm not disagreeing with the author, I just would want to see more data. The reason this doesn't 100% pass my sanity check is that the study's figures suggest that ~2m people use gun's defensively every year, which is a very high figure given that there are ~680k violent crimes every year per the study. So I would want to know the distribution of the cases when guns are used defensively, to understand this discrepancy

Alex3917 9y ago

I saw the other day that the percentage of Americans who say they've defended themselves with a gun is lower than the percentage of Americans who say they've been abducted by aliens.

Density 9y ago

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.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> CDC can't study gun violence because they are out to ban guns. Seems to me if that was the concern, removing the CDC head with the problem and then not appointing/confirming one with the same problem would be the solution. I mean, that's like saying we should permanently ban the DoJ from enforcing civil rights law because of Jeff Sessions’s views.
- Density 9y ago
  Sure let's weaponize all government agencies in our fight against our political rivals. Are we really here already? I thought we'd have another decade at least. Next step political violence.
contoraria 9y ago
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.
RickJWagner 9y ago
I find it interesting that nobody seems interested in studying the characteristics of people who have trouble with guns versus those who don't. I was born and raised in a midwest state that relies largely on tourism. The pheasant hunting season in particular is a big deal. My family, friends, and just about everybody I knew owned guns. In that context, I knew absolutely nobody who ever used a gun to hurt a human being. And I knew all these people for several decades. Blaming the guns is just wrong. There are other factors at play here. We need to leave the framework (2nd amendment) alone and start working the root cause issues.

jakobegger 9y ago

I find it funny how statisticians obsess over the precise wording of their questions, and then perform elaborate logical deductions from their results, but somehow don’t consider that the only people bothering to answer their surveys are bored people who love talking about themselves...

Passthepeas 9y ago

why has this been flagged?

ColanR 9y ago

Why was this flagged?

contoraria 9y ago
I guess some people around here are ... trigger happy.

markisus 9y ago

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 when suppression is due to political affiliations. But then how did the author obtain the data?

burfog 9y ago
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.
- markisus 9y ago
  I was able to find this page through Google search: https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-Factors/Behavioral-Risk-Factor-Surveillance-System-BRFSS-H/iuq5-y9ct/data 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.
  - glenra 9y ago
    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 https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/annual_data/annual_data.htm. Accessed 2-14-18.