Recently released emails show that the Center for Disease Control (CDC) met with gun control lobbyists to alter the publication of statistics surrounding the use of firearms in justified self defense.

The White House and the office of Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) introduced the lobbyists to CDC officials, ultimately aiding in arranging the meetings.

David Hughes, founder of anti-gun group Gun Violence Archive (GVA) which runs GVPedia, asked the CDC to remove the statistics on the basis that they were harmful to public health.

The original CDC publication shows that between 60,000 and 2.5 million cases of defensive gun uses (DGU) occur per year, based on a study by Gary Kleck that had been verified and regularly updated since the 1990s.

Hughes and GVA claim that statistics could only be pulled from incidents that were reported to law enforcement even though all sides acknowledge that there are unreported incidents.

After initially standing by the Kleck data, the CDC met with Hughes and others at least once in September of 2021 after introduction from the White House and Durbin’s office.

"That 2.5 Million number needs to be killed, buried, dug up, killed again and buried again," Mark Bryant, director of the Gun Violence Archive, wrote. "It is highly misleading, is used out of context and I honestly believe it has zero value — even as an outlier point in honest … discussions." 

Bryant added that the data had been harmful to efforts to pass gun control legislation.

Beth Reimels, Associate Director for Policy, Partnerships, and Strategic Communication at the CDC’s Division of Violence Prevention, wrote:

We are planning to update the fact sheet in early 2022 after the release of some new data. We will also make some edits to the content we discussed that I think will address the concerns you and other partners have raised.

The Trace originally reported on the change in statistical reporting in June of 2021. The emails acquired by Konstadinos Moros, a lawyer representing the California Rifle & Pistol Association, and reported by The Reload, reveal the involvement of Hughs, GVA and other anti-gun groups, as well as that of Hannah Bristol, White House Office of Public Engagement, and Emily Hampsten, Senator Durbin’s Communications Director.

Neither the White House, nor Sen. Durbin’s office responded to The Sentinel’s request for comment on their involvement.

“I caught the CDC in a lie a couple years ago when they mischaracterized the Pfizer trial data. I got them on the phone and they agreed, and they said they would fix their website. But they never did. Their site remains unchanged to this day. Maybe it's because I'm a Republican.”
— Congressman Thomas Massie to The Sentinel

“Sally” (no last name given) with the CDC-INFO Correspondence Team responded to The Sentinel via email:

CDC does not advocate for or against gun policies. CDC engages with a wide variety of partners every day. It is not unusual for partners to be connected to the agency through members of Congress or the White House. In the past year alone, CDC has met with a number of organizations interested in the topic of firearm injury and violence prevention—including gun rights organizations, gun violence prevention organizations, public health organizations, and medical societies.  

Professor Gary Kleck, who researched and released the defensive gun use survey in question, said that the CDC has proved their politicization through their removal of his research.

“CDC is just aligning itself with the gun-control advocacy groups,” Kleck told The Reload. “It’s just saying: ‘we are their tool, and we will do their bidding.’ And that’s not what a government agency should do.”

Kleck continued:

The justification for keeping any defensive gun use estimates out in order to keep a fact sheet succinct, it’s just another way of saying we can’t afford to even put one sentence in about the most frequent violence-related use of firearms. That the factsheet is not in any way harmed by including this fact.

 

…You can’t understand any significant aspects of the gun-control debate once you eliminate defensive gun use. It becomes inexplicable why so many Americans oppose otherwise perfectly reasonable gun-control measurements. It’s because they think it’s gonna lead to prohibition, and they won’t have a gun for self-defense.

 

It’s not complicated.

Republican lawmakers quickly spoke out against the CDC’s choice to remove the study.

“I caught the CDC in a lie a couple years ago when they mischaracterized the Pfizer trial data,” Congressman Thomas Massie told The Sentinel. “I got them on the phone and they agreed, and they said they would fix their website. But they never did. Their site remains unchanged to this day. Maybe it's because I'm a Republican.”

Massie, co-chair of the House Second Amendment Caucus, also told The Sentinel:

In rural America, where it's not uncommon for the Sheriff or his deputy to be 30 minutes away, to tell someone that they can't have a firearm is to tell them that they must submit to any attack on themselves or their household. Private firearms ownership stops millions of crimes every year. Criminals are dissuaded from their criminal activity because they figure out that the homeowner has a gun. These numbers should be accounted for by the CDC.

House GOP chairwoman Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Rep. Adam Pfluger (R-TX) wrote a letter to CDC director Rochelle Walensky on December 19th to request further information about how the CDC decided to remove the data. 

Reps. Stefanik and Pfluger wrote:

Opinions of the nation’s institutions continue to be low due to overt politicization — the CDC censoring public health facts at the behest of gun control advocates will only add to the mistrust. The removal of a study – commissioned by the CDC – indicates that the CDC is avoiding the responsibility bestowed to them by Congress. This censorship panders to the activist groups who aim to cover up the fact that much of the firearm industry prevails because consumers seek the ability to protect their life, liberty, and property.

Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who will be the new ranking Republican member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told The Reload:

Scrubbing government websites of statistics and evidence that are inconvenient to one side’s political narrative is absolutely unacceptable. Every day, a law-abiding American uses their God-given Second Amendment right to defend their life and the lives of their family. These Americans shall not be bullied, diminished, or lumped in with the criminals they are forced to defend themselves because of the liberal governments who refuse to enforce the laws on the books.