by Joseph P. Tartaro | Executive Editor
“Self-defense can be an important crime deterrent,” says a new report by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), which also seems to punch holes in a number of anti-gun arguments.
While news of the study’s findings did not get much media coverage when first released in July, it is significant that the $10 million study was commissioned by President Barack Obama as part of 23 executive orders issued in response to the Sandy Hook elementary school shootings he signed in January.
“Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies,” the CDC study, entitled “Priorities For Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” states, according to CNSNews.com.
The report, which notes that “violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past five years,” also pointed out that “some firearm violence results in death, but most does not.” In fact, the CDC report said, most incidents involving the discharge of firearms do not result in a fatality.
“In 2010, incidents in the US involving firearms injured or killed more than 105,000 Americans, of which there were twice as many nonfatal firearmrelated injuries (73,505) than deaths.”
The White House unveiled a plan in January that included orders to the CDC to “conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence.” According to the White House report, “Research on gun violence is not advocacy; it is critical public health research that gives all Americans information they need.” However, such research—no matter how flawed—has been used to justify gun control legislative initiatives at the federal and state levels in the past.
The Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council released the results of their research through the CDC in June. Researchers compiled data from previous studies in order to guide future research on gun violence, noting that “almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to CDC study finds self-defense guns are an ‘important crime deterrent’ more than 3 million per year.”
“Most felons report obtaining the majority of their firearms from informal sources,” adds the report, while “stolen guns account for only a small percentage of guns used by convicted criminals.”
Researchers also found that the majority of firearm deaths are from suicide, not homicide. “Between the years 2000 and 2010, firearm-related suicides significantly outnumbered homicides for all age groups, annually accounting for 61% of the more than 335,600 people who died from firearm related violence in the United States.”
During the same period, firearms related homicides and injuries have been declining dramatically even as firearms sales and new ownership have been increasing.
The CDC report even expresses uncertainty about gun control measures, stating that “whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue,” and that there is no evidence “that passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime.” It also stated that proposed “gun turn-in programs are ineffective.”
Instead, researchers proposed gun safety technologies such as “external locking devices and biometric systems” to reduce firearm-related deaths.
“I thought it was very telling that this report focused so heavily on . . . futuristic technology that’s not been brought to the market in any kind of reliable form that consumers have any interest in,” John Frazer, director of research and information at the National Rifle Association (NRA), told CNSNews.com.
The CDC’s findings—that guns are an effective and often used crime deterrent and that most firearm incidents are not fatal—could affect the future of gun violence research, if not the national debate about gun policy.
According to a National Academies press release, organizations supporting the CDC study have close ties to Obama, but the study results seem to undercut the gun control agenda of the administration. The supporting organizations included: the Annie E. Casey Foundation; the Corporation for National and Community Service, the California Endowment, which has been promoting “Obamacare;” the Joyce Foundation, on whose Board of Directors Obama served for eight years prior to his Senate run; and Kaiser Permanente, which contributed over half a million dollars to his presidential campaign.
