
What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses? - tomohawk
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3124326
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opportune
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

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ColanR
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
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

~~~
ColanR
I get what you're saying, and that it's hard to come up with simple,
straightforward questions that address all the likely misunderstandings. But,
in this case, I was observing that in response to your comment,

> even though these wouldn't technically count according to the wording of the
> survey, we are still relying on respondents' interpretations of the
> questions

it seemed that in this case, the question was worded rather well. Particularly
since your response was based in personal anecdote.

~~~
opportune
Perhaps I'm not communicating myself very well. To be blunt, the question
could be worded as well as possible, that doesn't preclude the subject
material from introducing a bias anyway. And given that the subject is
relatively controversial and not 100% well-defined (we have no way of
determining whether the use was "justified" or even actually defensive), that
_could_ indeed introduce a significant bias.

~~~
ColanR
Well, I see what you mean, but it sounds like _no_ servey could be acceptable
by that criteria.

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jakobegger
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...

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lainga
Why was the CDC asking about firearms?

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JumpCrisscross
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_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention#References)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_an...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centers_for_Disease_Control_and_Prevention#Gun_violence)

~~~
SlowRobotAhead
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?

~~~
lordnacho
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
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.

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markisus
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
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
I was able to find this page through Google search:
[https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-
Factors/Behavior...](https://chronicdata.cdc.gov/Behavioral-Risk-
Factors/Behavioral-Risk-Factor-Surveillance-System-BRFSS-H/iuq5-y9ct/data)

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
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._

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Density
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
> 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
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.

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Alex3917
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.

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Passthepeas
why has this been flagged?

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ColanR
Why was this flagged?

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contoraria
I guess some people around here are ... trigger happy.

