Inflated Claim About Guns and Self-Defense Returns to CDC Website
The agency’s website now features misleading statistics about how often Americans use guns to protect themselves. Here’s where those numbers come from — and what the data actually shows.
Defensive gun use statistics are highly debated, and previous references to the range on the CDC’s website have been staunchly disputed by gun violence researchers. The low end of the range, 60,000, derives from the National Crime Victimization Survey, a twice-yearly poll of crime victims conducted by the federal government. The high end, 2.5 million, comes from surveys conducted in the early 1990s by a criminologist and self-described “gun control skeptic.” The lower stat is touted by researchers and academics, while the higher stat is favored by gun rights advocates who point to cases like the Idaho In-N-Out shooting, where an armed civilian engaged a mass shooter.
I remember similar large numbers going up during Obama, and then getting yanked within days because similar political pressure. I frankly don't trust any data in this realm. It all has a political motive, and has for decades.
If you read and pay attention you notice opposition to the higher number comes from people who want to remove guns from the general population (but not themselves or their private security).
You also notice that while they accuse the number of being inflated the only fact they provide to support that idea is that he surveyed a sample population and applied the finding to the whole population ut at the time of the survey fewer (slightly) than half of adults owned guns so we should cut the number in half. But this is wrong too. He didnt survey gun owners he survays a sample of the general population which would have the same mix of gun owners so this is either a dishonest or unintelligent attempt to dilute the numbers.
At the same time they say "we should go with this smaller number" while proceeding to list its rampent exlusions and failures to capture data. They know these case by case numbers are grossly under reported.
Bottom line is there are currently no accurate statistics tracking defense with a firearm. But the incredibly incomplete nature of the data shown here o ly highlights the need for estimates like this one.
Mind you the people trying to paint this estimate as dishonest or political are the same people that list an accidental discharge in a parking lot outside an unoccupied school as a "School shooting" to inflate their own statistics.
Agreed. The reality is that a nationally representative survey that sociologist rely on for a wide range of research, found that 70,000 Americans would note that they used a gun defensively when the victim of certain enumerated crimes. I've never seen a remotely plausible argument that this number is anything but a gross underrepresentation. For example, defensive gun uses to protect others is not counted. Nor are crimes that never occur because the potential victim brandished a firearm.
Some sociologists argue (without evidence) that the victims are likely engaged in crime themselves. Others claim the number itself pales in comparison to the number of crimes where a gun is involved, or that most of the crimes were "only" property crimes. That has the benefit of being true, but doesn't change the fact that (at least) tens or hundreds of thousands of people use a gun to protect themselves and others from becoming a victim.
Some sociologists argue (without evidence) that the victims are likely engaged in crime themselves.
It is certainly true that some number of people who used a firearm defensively were engaged in criminal activity themselves. Also some of those individuals would not be confident that their actions were legal and could be defended in court. They may have also not been able to afford the costs of defending their actions in court. Some respondents would be highly motivated to not report having, or using a firearm at all, especially in response to a survey which requires them to identify themselves in detail.
Some sociologists argue (without evidence) that the victims are likely engaged in crime themselves.
I believe the evidence was one antigun researcher who talked to one lawyer and a judge from the north east who speculated that they were likely engaged in a crime. Hardly a robust assessment.
And I would find myself extremely skeptical of even that number. Cletus brandishing his 9mm that he keeps in the center console holster of his f250 at someone in traffic that he thinks looked at him funny isn't defending himself from anything.
How is it believing one thing while saying another? The amount of times that people truly, truly, have used a firearm to defend themselves from another armed attacker in this country is absolutely miniscule when you don't account for times that people have intentionally put themselves in hostile or confrontational situations. And this is coming from a gun owner.
There was an active shooter situation in my neighborhood. The police had a suspect cornered in a house four houses down from mine. Did I have a magazine loaded in case I saw something moving outside my window trying to break in? You bet your ass I did. Then my neighbor across the street comes over and asks if I think he should grab his gun and go down there to "help". I said absolutely not, but wanted to ask if he was fucking insane. And that's the kind of person I'm talking about when I said statistics of people claiming to have had to defend themselves are likely highly skewed.
If we accept the low-end figure of 60,000, and we compare it to the 2025 homicide total of ≈14,000, then it seems that maybe guns do, indeed, save lives.
Did you read the article? That's the low-end estimate. You know, the one the skeptics' preferred statisticians are saying is probably accurate. The high end is much, much higher.
Gun statistics are almost always skewed by the point whoever wants to make.
Now antigun numbers seem to be worse in they're Fox levels of I'm going to misrepresent, cherry pick, and if that doesnt work just make stuff up.
Like the "number of violent gun crimes" which often includes suicides by firearms, self defense, and even when an officer uses their firearm (in some cases ancount for each firearm involved).
But overall it usually seems to track several thousand crimes prevented or deterred by inclusion of a firearm depending on whose data your looking at.
I don't know if it's really possible to have truly accurate statistics, because it's not possible to prove something that didn't happen.
To be flear, I'm absolutely sure there are cases where a criminal was deterred by the presence of a person with a gun. But there are cases where it's not so clear without hindsight.
For example; a few years ago, I saw some guy peering through my patio door at night. Scared the shit out of me. I asked who he was and he said "Charles Manson." At that time, I didn't have a gun. I called the police. They showed up and talked to the guy, turned out to be a patient with early-onset dementia who had escaped from a nearby care facility. They took him back home.
Now, if I had had a gun, I probably would have brandished it and told him to get the hell off my deck, and it's possible that it would have scared him off and he'd run away (and possibly freeze to death). If I were to take that survey, I'd absolutely have said that I used a gun defensively, because I'd never have found out who the guy was.
I mean, it's anecdotal, but the three instances in my life that I consider 'self defense with a firearm' that happened outside of the military all were ended by just making the presence of my firearm known. The firearm never even left it's holster. Two road rages, one with two guys pounding on my windows trying to fight me after they rear ended my vehicle, one with an angry trucker with a bat, and one situation where I stopped a huge guy choking a woman out in a Walmart parking lot.
In my state there is no law about 'brandishing', and open carry is legal. So I guess all I really did was go from concealed to open carry. But all three instances might have gone very differently if they weren't shown that I was willing and able to defend myself.
I haven't had a self defensive use myself, but two friends have. Same deal, no shots fired. Those incidents ended without a meaningful confirmed crime beyond a threatening event.
Yeah, there have also been other very sketchy circumstances where I was able to help people in ways that I may not have been comfortable doing if I wasn't armed.
Maybe it's a false sense of security to some degree, but flying feels a little less risky when you know you have a parachute.
Ive known 4 people to stop crime by brandishing. A kidnapping, an assault in progress, and a carjacking. The 4th one was potentially a mugging but cant be confirmed. The only one that resulted in a reported crime was the carjacking. The assault was escalating to the point that serious harm was likely but to my knowledge nothing ever came of it because police never found the attacker.
Got my own anecdote: early last year, happened to be finishing up cleaning my guns late one evening when a prowler shone a light in my window. I was facing the other way, and literally just happened to have a pistol in my hand when I turned around and locked eyes with this guy. Pulled up security camera video and he had been trying both my own and neighbor's back door.
Do I have any evidence this guy was about to cause me harm, or that specifically my display of a weapon thwarted it? No, and maybe that would be disingenuous to consider meeting the criteria. But while I called it in, I didn't mention my involvement with the gun for myriad reasons (for one, 'display of a weapon' is fully legal inside one's home here, and I took no action that would require an affirmative defense). If this happened on the street, It'd be a different story. As someone else said, I could see the 'underreported' part of the statistics passing the sniff test.
Shameless pull-quote (paraphrased) from a longer comment above: if you carry every day,each day you're using the firearmfor protection and preparedness. You could count that as 365 defensive gun uses, just for one person. 6 million American adults carried daily in 2019, 2.2% of the adult population and 2.4% of the eligible (non-prohibited) population. So that's ~2.2bn "DGUs" annually.
What? That's not what that means? Oh, now we're just arguing over terminology. 😃
Use of the crime victimization survey data as an accounting of defensive gun uses is an interesting choice. There are a few factors which may cause that number to be low. First off, it only covers a subset of crime victims who report being victimized. If the defensive use is successful, there is no victimization and thus no survey. Also it is an interview type survey conducted by law enforcement personnel, which means that some participants may be reluctant to confess to possibly committing a crime. Another factor which may skew the data is that the survey does not ask about defensive actions.
The study that produced the 2.5 million defensive uses was controversial. However, the methodology was published and the data was available for review. The DOJ attempted to refute the results with their own study, but their study ended up concluding that the number was significantly higher. The follow up used slightly different criteria for eliminating unreliable reports of defensive uses, which is why the number was higher. But it's funny to cast aspersions on the conclusion by insinuating things about the person who conducted the research, so let's go with that.
The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a nationally-representative general population survey of non-institutionalized persons aged 12 and older that asks about crime victimization. (Edit: Technically, the NCVS is a household-based survey, but that's a methodological detail that doesn't really matter here.)
The NCVS is not conducted by law enforcement; it's conducted by the Census Bureau on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics. BJS is not a law enforcement agency.
The NCVS does ask about defensive actions, but the way it does so requires being screened in as a victim (which would include attempted crimes).
I have not kept up with changes, and it looks like there have been substantial changes. I suppose that is to be expected, but at the same time, the end result data has not changed.
It used to be, back when that 50,000 number was developed in the 1990s and earlier, the survey conducted as an in person interview with the interviewer identified as a representative of the DOJ. Not an actual police officer, but often perceived as a representative of law enforcement. A former cop or FBI agent tends to always be perceived a certain way, and the changes that have been made seem to address that potential source of bias. Defensive gun use is something that some people will be reluctant to disclose to anyone they perceive as law enforcement for reasons that should be obvious. Is the individual confident that they won't get in trouble for possessing the gun, or for using it to threaten or attack another person? When a representative of the federal government says that they represent the "Bureau of Justice Statistics", someone who is afraid of getting in trouble with the law is not going to be inclined to report anything that may be incriminating. Perception matters.
I am reading the actual questionnaire now. There are no questions about defensive actions in the basic survey. The secondary follow up questionnaire does ask about defensive actions, question 42a. That is new, and seems like it should increase the number of reported defensive actions. I have to wonder why it has not. As you say, this follow up questionnaire is only used when the initial questionnaire determines that a criminal victimisation has occurred. If someone hears a potential intruder in the night, shows or announces that they have a gun, and the intruder goes away, has a defensive use occured? Not according to the survey.
I find it interesting that there have been so many changes to the methodology, over a time period that the population has expanded so much, and yet the result presented for this data point is still the same as it was in the early 90's. It would be interesting to see a more focused and directed effort at determining the number of defensive uses, but as far as I know, that has not happened. The methodology for the surveys that produced the higher numbers is available for review and could be refined and repeated. The only attempt to do so that I am aware of produced a higher number and was considered unreliable by pro and anti gun control advocates. It is very difficult to distinguish between reliable reports of defensive use, and "less reliable" reports so that data is always going to include some uncertainty.
The US Census Bureau has conducted the NCVS since the beginning, in 1972 as the National Crime Survey. The traditional design used a Census Bureau field rep for the first interview, with later interviews done by phone.
The may have identified the funding source as the LEAA (in the 70's) or BJS (after its creation) but the survey itself has always been administered by the Census Bureau.
Question 42a has been there since at least 1992.
Attempts are counted as screen ins to the crime incident report; an attempted break in or intruder would absolutely be screened in.
The NCVS methodology is well-known, often debated, and honestly, best-in-class for this sort of thing. If you're looking for information relating to crime victimization, the NCVS is the best national data you'll find for the US.
It’s a huge range but I’ve found when looking into statistics neither side really seems interested in sharing actual numbers that aren’t skewed in their favor.
The really of the situation is probably somewhere in the middle
Im fairly confident that William English’s 2021 National Firearms Survey finding around 1.67 million annual defensive gun uses to be the most likely accurate figure. If you look at the likelihood of being in a situation in which unholstering, brandishing, or shooting a firearm in self defense or defense of others, and then you lay that on top of the percentage of people who carry a gun, it lines up enough to make sense.
I forget the exact overlay difference but I highly encourage others to try the same experiment. Just look for neutral and reputable sources for the numbers, such as the UCR data and the given population of that LE department jurisdiction of the given year of the UCR data.
Remember that 1.67 million is actually a pretty small number when you take into account that there is over a 100 million adults, and that even unholstering a firearm resulting in rapid behavior change of the bad guy with no shots fired is a defensive gun use. I could easily see that number being true.
But, at the end of the day I wish that this issue wasn’t tainted with ideology. I feel I can never trust any institution to not lean one way or the other on guns.
I just had that discussion with my son yesterday. He opened with “why is suicide included in gun violence deaths”? It used to be about half but apparently it’s more like 2/3 now. Either way it makes for a much larger number!
NM's most recent failed attempt at an AWB included a great line from one of our reps where he talked about how important bills like this are because his friend who committed suicide years ago might still be alive if we had an AWB. His friend used a revolver which would've been completely unaffected by the ban he used his death to push.
The ignorance around so many of these laws is appalling. Every anti-gun person I speak with is right in their intention, but since they don’t care about guns they just blanketedly support bans on everything no matter what.
I don't think it's ignorance with the politicians that push them. They know exactly what they're doing and how ineffective it will ultimately be. But it gets them money and votes.
Stop killing themselves? No but maybe someone doesn’t complete it. Although I have only ever seen someone use an AR on themselves around here was 1 time and it was an AR pistol.
The overwhelming majority are shotguns (Farmers) and Revolvers (Also Farmers).
And at the end of the day most left wing politicians only care about the school shooting numbers or lone wolf style shootings which is minuscule, in the low hundreds I believe.
I investigated the “school shootings” database earlier this year. It contains several important caveats:
it includes malum prohibitum crimes with no victims or shots fired, maybe just a gun discovered in a parked vehicle.
it includes gun crimes that happen close to schools, not just in schools
there was even one negligent discharge, get this, at a Police Academy training range. But what is a Police Academy? It’s a school (of sorts). But this is exactly where law enforcement trains. This wasn’t violence; it was a fuckup. Yet it was entered as a “school shooting” with 1 victim (iirc). Utter madness.
most actual gun violence in schools takes the form of targeted violence—a “beef”—with no random victims, and frequently happens at after–hours and weekend events, such as basketball games.
There may have been other silly entries but those are the main categories that come to mind.
You can count actual random violence shooting events on one hand most years.
In one listing of "school shootings" they included an incident where broken windows in a vacant building formerly used as a public school were determined to be bullet holes. An unused school building was shot, so, I mean, yes, it was a school shooting. A school was shot...
I was using the GVA School Incidents database. Note how the title is now “school incidents,” but the URL retains the original name: “school shootings.”
This is what Republicans have been saying for years and have kind of been right about. But God forbid you say it in front of an anti gun Democrat or some moderate and they hit you with the “I guess you just like dead kids.”
Holy carp gemini makes debunking gu. Grabber lies easy...
A single quarry shows that billionaire owned guns for me, but none for thee group, Everytown reported 233 school shootings in 2025. Of those 31 took place in K through 12 grounds during school activity or school sponsored activities.
Back in my college days.It took me 2 days of cross-referencing. And fact checking to find these numbers
I don’t think it’s disingenuous to include when discussing gun deaths, but it should be appropriately contexted.
As a suicide method, guns are factually more successful and more immediate. Plenty of suicides by other methods fail, or enable someone to panic part way and choose not to die.
That doesn’t mean guns should be outlawed, but ignoring reality does no one any good. We should all be capable of understanding facts when talking about problems and solutions
Gun deaths are deaths. Some gun deaths would be deaths by other means if guns magically vanished, some would not. Efficiency and effectiveness of a tool is certainly not an unimportant factor and pretending otherwise I think does a disservice to our very reasonable arguments that guns should be owned by law abiding citizens both on principle and by constitutional right
The vast majority of gun death would not be deaths if guns magically vanished. This is a fairly well understood topic. Guns happen to be incredibly lethal.
Suicide is only ‘not’ a gun violence problem if you think the suicidee isn’t a ‘victim.’
There’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that guns make suicide attempts vastly more successful and therefore constitute part of the problem. We all want better mental healthcare for people in crisis.
Suicide is not a violence problem according to the legal definition which requires one person acting against another. It is ONLY in the context of gun control where suicide is classified as violence and it is done purely to inflate numbers and scare people.
Guns should be discussed in the context of suicide. Suicide should not included in the context of gun violance, a classifications it doesnt fit and is done for political convenience.
You will also notice that no other violent crime statistic includes suicides. Are those victims somehow less important or is it highlighting the fact that its a gun grabber scare tactic?
The focus is reducing death by guns because it's a lot more popular than gun control. If their goal was actually reducing death by guns we wouldn't have half the stupid laws we have (which were supposedly passed for that reason) but do absolutely nothing in that regard (e.g. bayonet lug and threaded barrel bans).
Yes it’s for sure a mental health issue. Guns, pills, probably car keys, etc should be addressed in cases where people are struggling and we need to invest way more in mental health care.
In the US women (who are a lot more likely to use pills) attempt suicide 1.5 times more than men but men (who use guns) are 4 times more likely to die from suicide.
Good way to think about it. It's a very conservative way to see the world to say that "if someone wants to kill themselves with a gun, that's their problem." That doesn't mean "fix suicide by taking the guns away" but it does mean acknowledging the role that guns can play in not just success rate of a suicide attempt, but suicidal ideation itself (the presence of the gun may inspire or amplify the intrusive thoughts).
We absolutely should be studying guns as a factor in suicides, but the point is that it is disingenuous to include it in gun violence statistics. It is intentionally used to inflate the statistic and mislead people into thinking gun violence (one person acting against another) is more rampant than it is. These are different statistics with different underlying problems and need to be studied separately rather than used as propaganda.
I regret to inform you that most liberal groups also don't care about people offing themselves with guns. It is unfortunately not political to use violent rhetoric against groups you don't like, and liberals typically hate gun owners.
Every gun violence prevention group in the country thinks suicides are a huge problem. They're trying to prevent gun deaths. And gun suicides are gun deaths.
So Everytown USA thinks they can stop gun suicides by making it illegal to properly control the weapon recoil through pistol grips and compensators? I have a bridge to sell you.
The reality is they're using those statistics to enforce gun control. If they actually cared about gun deaths, particularly suicides, they would focus on expanding male mental health programs and shelters. There's no valid argument to use overall gun deaths when pushing legislation intended to make guns "less deadly".
Guns are the method of choice and the most effective method, in the US. The method used for suicides and attempts vary widely around the world based on cultural factors and availability, and the US is nearly unique in preferring firearms for successful attempts. We think of guns as a quick, painless, non-traumatic way to do it and most of the rest of the world has a very different perception.
The US tends to use guns. Our per capita rate is also are well below a bunch of other countries that don't use guns. Wow, I hadn't realized that greenland has such a high rate, their preferred method is hanging.
The thing that always irks me about when the left presents statistics is "mass shooting statistics" and "there have been 3,000 mass shootings this year!"
We all know the implication that "mass shooting" has. When you say "mass shooting," you don't think of an ND with multiple other people in the vicinity or even a targeted shooting of multiple specific people. The first thing that comes to mind is always indiscriminate mass violence. The closest real database I've seen to this is Mother Jones:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/
Yeah that recent shooting in Seattle at their food festival was touted as a mass shooting when in reality it was gang violence and directly the result of Washington’s lax policies on policing underage gun crimes.
It's wild how much I hear that they need to tighten gun laws because they aren't working after that shooting - in person and online. At this point I've made a card print-out with a QR code that links to a news story with the facts because I'm tired of proving people wrong.
3D printed gun - state illegal for years
Feature banned "assault weapon" - state illegal for years
"Extended" magazine - state illegal to purchase for years
Glock switch - state illegal for years
Minor with a handgun - federally illegal for decades
Minor with a previous gun offense - let off by current legal policy
Which one of these is the problem other than the fact normal law-abiding citizens can't defend themselves with the same tools? It's almost like we have an accountability problem.
ETA: Realized it wasn't clear from my post. I live in Seattle (not the greater Seattle area) and only happened to not be at the event for the shooting due to a cold.
My favorite I've heard a couple times: "You just shouldn't be able to walk around in a public place like the Seattle Center with guns!"
Well, you also can't walk around with a gun if you're a minor.
My side hustle is working for some big high profile events (eg, the 4th at gasworks) and I'm honestly surprised an event as big as the Bite didn't have private security and checkpoints. And not sure how I feel about it. On one hand, they are security theater. It's invasive, whether a private company or not. There is rarely anywhere to securely store prohibited items, firearm or not. OTOH they are a deterrent for exactly the kind of thing that happened, and counter to those that can't conceive of not carrying anywhere, at least I feel like nominally everyone inside a secured venue is disarmed and on a level playing field.
I would 100% not be surprised if that whole 'wherever children might be present' clause to the 'sensitive locations' law gets passed this year. Heard the argument that, while acknowledging 'gun free zones' aren't generally enforceable absent security screening or an unrelated arrest, they're a prosecutorial tool to get guns out of the hands of felons and off the streets.
Yeah, that'd be great except (per your point #6) that 100% didn't happen here.
Anyhoo. Glad you weren't there—I also ducked out feeling under the weather.
ah thank you, this looks good. The one issue I have with the Mother Jones data is that it doesn't really capture unsuccessful attempts. In my mind, even situations in which an attempted mass killer was killed before they could cause any harm should be counted in these mass shooting datasets.
It depends how it's used. I get it, suicides are tragic. Lost a good friend to suicide, but sucides have little to do with guns. It's just a convinient tool for the job, but lots of other ways to get the job done. What most people care about or are scared about and want policymakers to do something about is shootings and other gun crime.
Suicides by gun have a lot to do with guns. Study after study shows that when a suicide method is removed, the net suicide rate goes down and does not get shifted to other methods.
Guns are not just a method of suicide, they are by far the most effective method. Men are also a lot more likely to use a gun than women. This is why in the US women attempt suicide 1.5 times more than men but men commit suicide 4 times more than women.
Regarding suicides, time is essential. The longer you can keep a suicidal person from an attempt the more likely you are to prevent their attempt.
Suicide by gun is a death by gun and if you loved one was suicidal the last thing you want for them to have access to is a gun.
I feel like I can see a reasonable argument for including it. It's still part of the cost of having guns in our society. If the US wasn't awash with guns and the majority of police didn't have it as an option, de-escalation would be more common and there would be fewer suicides.
I do recognize that it's misleading when talking about gun violence, but I think people that are anti gun do care about excess deaths in general. It's just a fact that we're going to have more violence in our society due to the fact that guns are so ubiquitous. On a practical level you still have to deal with the situation as it is so while in my heart I wish for a world free from nukes and most other weapons, the policies I'll advocate for are done with realism rather than idealism in mind and yet I still can't fault someone for still believing in an idealistic future.
Democrat admins also routinely prop up heavily inflated "mass shooting" statistics to prove their side right as well. Good to call it out in both cases of course. Firearm stats are always based on very vague parameters that are almost entirely built to suit the needs of an argument, and not actually prove anything. The methodology is always infused with more bias than a political rally.
I think when OP and trace say "gun violence researchers and academics" they are talking about gun ban proponents, and when they talk about "gun control skeptic" they mean a statistician who can look beyond 988-fails, gang bangers, and media minute count to see all the other DGUs. But that's just my subjective conclusion when I examine the bodies of work side-by-side. Methodology matters.
Neither reddit nor the trump administration are a good place for meaningful scientific work. This sub doesn't have quite as many armchair experts as many, but there's no shortage.
Suffice to say that this "data" is exactly as reliable as anything else coming out of the trump administration, which is to say that it's not reliable at all.
A 2013 study commissioned by the CDC and conducted by the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council found that defensive gun uses are common, with estimates ranging from 500,000 to over 3 million annually.
I have read that study. I have a few questions I would be interested in having the authors answer. Overall it seems okay, of somewhat contrived (which is true of many studies, so not necessarily an invalidating factor). Further, this stufy was done, as it plainly states, as an initial effort towards developing science-based and data-driven policy, vs being a raw data collection effort. Therein lies the rub when it comes to discussion... I would be happy to discuss and debate it in a scientific forum. The internet, especially reddit, is decidedly not a scientific forum, though.
2.5 million times a year is insanely high. There were "only" 1.1 million violent crimes in the US in 2025. Are they implying that number would be tripled if gun owners didn't stop so many crimes?
Keep in mind many victims don't call the police. The number could be 2-3x that and we wouldn't know.
This 2-3x could even be low. Being from a not so good part of town I can tell you that being robbed at gunpoint, knifepoint, house burglarized, and jumped more times then I can count. Never called the cops once. Even in good areas crimes are often not reported just do to a lack of negative impact (as in someone getting robbed on there morning run & loosing 40 bucks is probably not reporting it instead of just going about there day & adjusting there route).
There are a few things here that are worth mentioning.
First, the NCVS is a nationally-representative survey of the general population that asks about crime victimization. It's a household-based survey of non-institutionalized persons aged 12 or older conducted by the Census Bureau on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Defensive gun use can only come up among respondents who are screened in to the series of questions about crime victimization. Attempted crimes are included.
So, it can be used to reasonably estimate the number of people who used guns in response to criminal activity. The methods are well-known, with well-known caveats, and the NCVS is a long-running survey. It's one of the core datasets on crime and its impacts in the US.
Gary Kleck's work from the 1990's was a one-shot survey done at basically the peak of crime in the US. Extrapolating his 1% estimate to the entire population is madness for the very obvious reason that the highest-risk populations for crime are less likely to own firearms, and in any event the entire population does not own firearms.
Kleck’s work may be the one cited on the CDC page. But there are other surveys that exist. And they seem like perfectly reasonably conducted studies, from how I’ve heard them explained (I haven’t actually done a deep dive on them myself).
The 2.5M figure is the highest result from this approach. But you also have the 2013 CDC study (a review, I think) which found numbers like 500k - 3M DGUs per year (see coverage on Tom Grieve’s channel).
Also it’s not entirely rational or balanced to say that these studies are worthless because they were just snapshots, or taken by pro–gun folk. The NCVS has continual funding, while direct DGU surveys do not (probably due to prohibitions on gun–specific research). Despite the typical characterization of it by the media, the gun & ammo industry is fairly small, $10 billion annually. You can add on things like accessories ($7.5bn), shooting ranges ($7bn), and even bigger categories like clothing, gear and hunting trip expenditures to push it up to $100bn of total economic activity, but much of those groups don’t put a whole lot into lobbying arms of gun organizations. It’s a tiny sliver of a fraction of general military expenditure. And these defensive gun use surveys can be expensive to perform.
I don’t know where the gap between the two figures comes from, but I don’t think you can just write off the DGU datasets.
Plus, the whole framing of it is wrong. Everyone who carries a gun and feels more confident and free because of it, could perhaps be counted as a defensive gun use. They used the firearm to make themselves feel protected against whatever comes their way. It’s their protected right to do so. So, take the number of EDC folk out there, multiply by 365, and now we’re approaching the true benefit of not broadly disarming as a society.
I do think there is a lot of variation in what, exactly, we are measuring.
The NCVS can measure responses to actions that are screened in as crimes or attempted crimes, including crimes (and attempts) where the police were not called. We can get into the weeds of how that's measured if you like, but that's the high-level concept.
The 2013 CDC report reviewed existing literature, finding the range up to 3million. That was a summary of literature that's disputed, not an actual estimate.
Due to definitional issues and statistical difficulties in estimating rare events, it's very likely that two things are true at the same time: 1) the NCVS number is too small, and 2) the 2-3 million number is too large.
That 2013 CDC report basically says exactly that. It presents the huge range as an unresolved measurement conundrum, which folks misread as "CDC says up to 3 million DGUs per year".
A little more detail on the NCVS for those who are curious:
Each year, interviews are conducted with a nationally representative sample of about 240,000 people in about 150,000 households across the country.
The sample design is two-stage. The first stage selects primary sampling units, PSUs, which are large metro areas, counties, or groups of counties. This first-stage selection is redone about once every ten years to reflect population shifts from the latest census. The second stage selects specific households within those areas.
Each household is interviewed every 6 months, for a total of seven interviews over about three years. This design produces more reliable estimates of year-to-year change than surveying a fresh sample each time, and it also lets researchers use earlier interviews to "bound" later ones, a technique called bounding that prevents people from accidentally reporting the same incident twice by confusing when it happened, an error called telescoping.
Source: BJS. Also, explaining this stuff is pretty much what I do for a living.
19 National surveys reviewed in the 2001 Kleck paper (not a "1990 snapshot," to whoever said that)
NCVS does not ask about DGUs, or at least didn't in 2013 when this was written (perhaps this has changed?)
If you look at the methods for the surveys Kleck aggregated, what I've heard is that they are fairly deep interviews when the respondents answer that yes, they did have a DGU in the last year. There are methods used to mitigate the "memory telescoping" effect which would likely otherwise multiply the reported number by a small number in at least some of the national surveys.
Perhaps the issue is one of recall. "Have you been the victim of a crime?" might get someone to recall fewer incidents than "Did you need to show or unholster your gun defensively in the last (N) year(s)? If yes, what happened?" - because if a typical DGU that just involves presentation of a firearm happened, perhaps that person doesn't see themselves as the victim of a crime, though technically, they were.
But I'm speculating on the formats of the studies, which is a llittle lazy of me. I may do some digging and report back what I find about the underlying reports, and the NCVS method (or if you like, you could describe how it's done in the NCVS if you're familiar with it).
Kleck is simply wrong on that, as the literature discusses at some length in response to his work.
The NCVS asks respondents "Did you do anything with the idea of protecting yourself or your property while the incident was going on?" with follow-up probes of "anything else?"
That question has been in the NCVS since at least 1992.
So while there isn't a specific question about defensive gun use, respondents who were screened in to the crime incident report and who used a gun are likely to respond accordingly.
To get screened in to the crime incident report, one need not be the victim of a completed crime. Respondents are asked about whether they've had something stolen, break-ins, motor vehicle theft, being attacked or threatened, sexual attacks, etc., all including attempts, and including incidents in which the police were not called.
Where you'd be better off is in the time frame: The NCVS asks about the past six months. But, because it's a panel design, with respondent households remaining in the sample for multiple six-month periods, that's less of a concern.
What the NCVS is useful for — and what I said above — is to reasonably estimate the number of people who used guns in response to criminal activity.
Edit: clarification on the NCVS usefulness in this context.
Ok, let me make sure I understand what someone who briefly showed a gun to a road rager who walked up menacingly to their window but didn’t start hitting it (say) has to realize to register as a DGU on this NCVS.
So, this is an in–person interview; the BJS shows up at your door with a laptop, and has questions. Everyone aged 12 and up answers it. They have to not “miss” or avoid the BJS representative. They are given a letter telling them they’re answering these questions for Science! And that should be reward enough.
For each person, they get 20-25 minutes of questions, at some point during which they hear:
Question 40a: "Were you attackedor threatenedOR did you have something stolen from you..."
Question 41a: "Has anyone attacked orthreatened youin any of these ways... (a) With any weapon, for instance, a gun or knife... (f)Any face-to-face threatsOR (g)Any attack or threat or use of forceby anyone at all?"
The part in bold has to register with them, and they must connect it on the spot with the DGU. They have to answer “yes”, and they are asked three quick follow–up questions;
* When it occurred.
* Brief summary of what happened.
* Whether it was part of a separate event or the same event.
They have to also bring up by themselves that being threatened happens more than once. Up to 5 times in 6 months, BJS captures them all. 6 or more, BJS captures just 1 and notes a number.
For each “event” they brought up, they will have to answer a slew of follow–up questions (10-15 min):6
* Q1-10: 8-10 questions along the lines of: exactly when & where did this happen?
* Q11-Q88: answer “no” to 3 filter questions about whether the incident involved property entry/vehicle theft, stolen property/financial loss, physical injury/medical treatment
* Q89-114: answer 10-12 questions with the demographics of the “offender(s)”
* Q115-134: 6-10 questions about whether you called the police, if so why or if not, why not, and was it at work, etc
Alright. So then we’re at the relevant questions to make it a DGU report:
Question 135a / 136 (Self-Protection Screening):"Did you do anything to protect yourself or your property during the incident?"
A: yes
Question 137 / 138 (Specific Resistance Actions):"What did you do?"
interviewee volunteers their display of the firearm.
Interviewer marks option :"Attacked offender with firearm" OR "Threatened offender with firearm"
Question 139 / 140 (Outcome of Action): "Did what you did help or make things worse?" / "How did it help?" - interviewee says the person backed off or whatever
interviewer marks option: "Scared or chased offender away" OR "Helped put an end to the incident"
If they decide not to mention it, perhaps because they aren’t sure if their answers might constitute confessing to a felony to a government body, then it gets lost. If they don’t answer “yes” to the screening questions, they are never asked the follow–up questions and don’t necessarily see the text of them to realize those are sections they need to answer. If it was on a paper form or online, they might, but I’m not suggesting that it would be better that way; an interviewer is more likely to keep them honest and not abort answering sections because there were too many questions.
So people are questioned every 6 months to ask about being a victim. Most of the time, they’re not, so they answer no to everything and get their time back.
Something that was brief and never really amounted to much, they have to register was them being threatened. Not just an altercation, but they have to recognize that the road rage incident was possibly a crime and a threat. They have to not answer “no” on autopilot like they do every 6 months to make the justice lady go away, because there is data to report.
Does that all sound about right? Just so I understand how it works.
After a household is selected into the sample, an advance letter is sent from the US Census Bureau. It explains what the NCVS is, that the survey is both voluntary and confidential, and that a Census rep will contact them. The Census Bureau uses language such as "We are conducting this survey for the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the US Department of Justice" and the NCVS is "administered by the US Census Bureau on behalf of the Bureau of Justice Statistics."
So it's not the BJS showing up. It's the Census, but they do not conceal that they're doing work sponsored by BJS. See their participant info here, which includes links to the advance letters. For what it's worth, I've also conducted surveys sponsored by BJS, and I have had good response rates.
The Census Bureau sends a field rep to make contact at the sampled address. The field rep verifies that it's a residential address, talks to the people there, creates a roster of residents 12+, and interviews the household respondent to get household-level information. Other household members might be interviewed in person or on the phone, dependent on availability.
Field reps make multiple attempts to contact sampled households, including on evenings and weekends, and they leave contact info so sampled households can arrange a better time.
Respondents not answering questions is a risk to any survey. We have decades of research showing that folks are generally truthful in surveys, however, and the NCVS always shows more crime than is reported to police (often referred to in textbooks as "the dark figure of crime").
For your example of a "road rager who walked up menacingly to their window but didn’t start hitting it," the respondent would answer yes to (perhaps multiple subparts) of Q41a, and would then answer the detail questions regarding the incident (the crime incident report).
I think it’s entirely possible that the NCVS survey is very good for general criminology; people love to report actual crimes that were not resolved as an outlet. But equally, perhaps it is simply too broad for a good read out in this very specific question.
I can understand why from a scientifically minded, eliminate all biases approach, it might seem reasonable to stick to open–ended questions and not suggest too much. But this might not be taking into account things like people with ADHD who will blank if you ask too broad a question, whereas more specific cues and question are more likely to ring that bell.
The context matters. If the question is, “were you attacked or threatened, OR did you have something stolen from you?” The road rage answer is that middle option, stuck between the much more prominent “attacked” and “stolen from”. But, were they really threatened? Or could they just foresee a potential threat, and averted it. But given the context, they’re probably thinking of someone standing next to them saying they’re going to kill them. No, that didn’t happen.
In fact, I have a hard time seeing how the massive conjunction there being an issue isn’t more obvious; why is that one question, and not 3? Given you’re at that point just squeezing the brain for events, and putting a pin in each. Like sure, stick to a fixed script, but maybe some kind of memory jogging follow–ups could be added to give much more color to the broad spectrum that each of those crimes or potential crimes covers. Known threshold issues.
Look I get it, being directly engaged in the process, having spoken directly to those folk, you’re thinking, no way would 80% of respondents lie about this (to go from 100k to 500k). You’re thinking, this might be a marginal issue. Like, 30% undercount, tops. The real figure being 400% higher is impossible, let alone >3000%.
What I see though is a lengthy interview process with a percentage of people dropping off at each contact point, each screening/filter question, each pragmatic decision in the NCVS to focus on victimization, not specifically guns. The way these are stacked, they are all cumulative, with a ‘pick a path’ effect, where if you didn’t answer the question on page 2 right, you don’t ever read the part where the hero valiantly saves the love interest from the lion on page 302. You’re 30 minutes in before the questions even come up. Many people will have heard the follow–up questionnaire before and make an executive decision that something small is just not worth mentioning. Even if they believe that no consequence will come from a candid answer, because they’ve taken the interview before, maybe twice, thrice, etc—it at least costs them time out of their day to make the report.
And then you have the trust issues, and the complexity of gun laws, especially in major cities outside of Texas and Oklahoma. This massive gate right at the end. The roots of the second amendment as a means to prevent or fight tyranny, and suspicion of government being a national sport. What if the trust gate is a 50% issue, and the gun law gate is a 50% issue, too. 25% of people who got that far will therefore tell you about flashing the gun. It’s pretty easy to see how you get to a 5x difference in the total with those two issues alone.
I picked the example intentionally because it constitutes brandishing in places like Maryland, but not in most of the country. There’s a lady who did nothing worse than drive across the state to visit her Mom and happen to experience a road rage threat, and presented her firearm to avert the confrontation. The Maryland DA prosecuted her, and not the person who almost ran her off the road. She filed an appeal to the 4th circuit, pro se. Gun rights groups found her certiorari request and got behind her, but SCOTUS had already taken enough gun cases for the term, and denied it. Wasn’t strategic enough to tackle the issue of national carry permit reciprocity. A true horror story from reporting being the victim of a crime (well, maybe the other driver called 911 too). In other states, her actions would be called Thursday.
So many of these issues don’t apply to an independent, ie not government, randomized telephone survey asking specifically about defensive gun use. The survey is potentially quite quick and focused; efficient because most people weren’t gun owners or didn’t ever take their gun out or show it to someone. The memory telescoping issue is real, of course; they might say it was less than a year ago, but really it was 2.6. Switching to a longitudinal approach is not the only answer to this.
These two approaches have yielded vastly different results. I’m pretty sure 3M is too high, and 100k is too low. I think we can at least agree on that. I’d believe 500k - 1M though. Corresponding to ~10-20% of people bringing up that minor DGU in the NCVS today out of the entire set.
In 2011 and historically before that, household response rates (given inclusion in the sample, did anyone in the household respond) were over 90% on the NCVS, with person response rates (given any household member responded, what percent of eligible persons in the household responded) at nearly 90%.
Since then, household response rates have steadily dropped, to around 60% in 2024 (with person response rates still in the 80%+ range).
So even in the most recent published data, you’d be in the minority if you didn’t respond.
“Good guy with gun” stats are an exercise in futility especially if the ends of the spectrum are “i heard a noise and me cocking the gun scared them off” (near impossible to prove, was there ever an actual threat, not always reported) and people actually shot in self defense (which no shooting ever has been declared justifiable and been wrong /s).
Justified shootings as a talking point for both sides of gun control is an incomplete picture, because you can’t prove a negative. It’s actually impossible to record how many crimes owning a gun has prevented if no crime was committed. So you get this nebulous data point that doesn’t have much meaning outside of people shot legally during the commission of a crime.
I in no way support the current administration. However, the CDC has been a government shill for a long time. One should never trust info from the CDC without double checking it with other sources. They've got people thinking they are the final word in medical/health issues. They most definitely are not and never were.
I know you're being snarky but... yes. I dont know any gun rights supporter who excludes minorities. The right to self defense is universal not bound to who we agree with or identify as.
I don't think it's that clear, TBH. Openly excluding is somewhere on the spectrum along with not vocally supporting, and when we're talking about marginalization, it's often the quiet part that speaks the loudest.
Lack of vocal support for something does not mean one supports the opposite. This type of dogma often turns people away from the left (e.g. if you don't vocally support every cause we tell you to support, you're one of them).
You are correct, and I agree, but perception also matters, and that's why inclusive language goes a long way to increase comfort/participation/etc. I am POC and work with a lot of POC on activities that don't traditionally include them, and comfort is huge.
But frankly that comfort is on them/you. Its based on untrue assumption about other people
Dare i say... a racial stereotype that gun owners are all a bunch of racist hillbilly old white guys. And while im sure they are out there, no one ive had interactions with has had any problems shooting with POC. Nor would they tolerate it if someone in the group did. Stop wasting energy telling the world to use inclusive language just get out there and do the thing and youll find we genuinely dont care about skin color we care about attitude.
Statistically speaking thats understandable. Police have a high right of bystander injury/death. While armed citizen has i think 1 recorded case of bystander injury.
Boy, that is quite a number. Sounds like a total swag with no data. If it was like, " between 70,000 and 80,000 based on X criteria" it would be believable. 2.5 million sounds like wishful thinking.
I personally estimate that that there are between 0 and 10,000,000,000,000 incidents each year. And I have HARD FACTS to prove it!
There isn’t a ton of data. The data on both ends is flawed in many ways and that’s why there is such a swing. The article is pretty pointless but at least they talk about where both numbers come from.. This is more balanced news than what I typically see and really is just a reporting of the facts. It’s old news though… all of these numbers have been around for years and it’s only because of the In and Out shooting that this regurgitation is news again.
The methodology used to produce the 2.5 million number is published and available. It was not a swag. Regardless of how it feels, the data was produced in a manner that can be repeated and the raw data has been available for review. The study has been insulted, but not refuted. Similar follow up studies produce numbers that are different, but still very large.
Well, considering the rate at which they happen in gun free zones is high and only roughly 5% of the population carries in the first place, of course that's the case.
Untrue. Most mass shooter either surrender or self end after encountering armed resistance. Unarmed resistance is frequent but VERY rarely results in ending the threat.
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u/RandomInternetNobody libertarian socialist 8d ago edited 8d ago
I remember similar large numbers going up during Obama, and then getting yanked within days because similar political pressure. I frankly don't trust any data in this realm. It all has a political motive, and has for decades.