Many people who support gun control are angry that the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are not legally allowed to use money from Congress to do research whose purpose is “to advocate or promote gun control.” (This is not the same as doing no research into gun violence, though it seems to discourage many potential recipients of CDC money.) But in the 1990s, the CDC itself did look into one of the more controversial questions in gun social science: How often do innocent Americans use guns in self-defense, and how does that compare to the harms guns can cause in the hands of violent criminals? Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck conducted the most thorough previously known survey data on the question in the 1990s. His study, which has been harshly disputed in pro-gun-control quarters, indicated that there were more than 2.2 million such defensive uses of guns (DGUs) in America a year.
In response to Yeti coolers telling the National Rifle Association it no longer wants to do any more business with the NRA Foundation, one company sent a not-so-subtle message to its customers to reassure them on where it stands on the Second Amendment.
In 1993, Jay Simkin and Aaron Zelman of the group Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership published a document titled “Gun Control: Gateway to Tyranny,” which highlights the similarities between the Nazi Weapons Law of March 18, 1938 and the U.S. Gun Control Act of 1968. Dedicated to the “tens of millions of victims of Nazi ‘gun control,” the book maintains that “the Nazi Weapons Law is the blueprint for ‘gun control’ in America.” The following is a synopsis of their points:
Access to ammunition and reloading components (bullets, gun powder, brass, and especially primers) will be controlled.
Police-issued ammunition and reloading components acquisition permits will be required..
A Firearms Owner Identity card issued by the federal government will be required. (In fact, Massachusetts, Illinois, and New Jersey already have such cards.)
Copper, copper alloys, brass, and steel bullets are now classified as armor-piercing “cop-killer bullets” and so prohibited, and these restrictions will be justified based on health or environmental grounds.
Bans on ammunition sales may be imposed. In fact, temporary bans occurred throughout the early 1990s in Los Angeles and Chicago.
Access to firearms will be taxed, and the penalties for evading this tax will be severe.
Those who do not renew their permits will have to surrender their firearms to the government or sell them at distress prices to those who can still afford the permits.
The term “sporting purpose” will be redefined to slash the right to own whole classes of firearms. Thus, the right to own firearms will depend on a bureaucrat’s whim. Certain military features such as pistol grips, bayonet lugs, and flash suppressors will be removed.
Newly discovered statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which were allegedly “never publicly released,” dismantle the liberal gun control narrative that firearms are not regularly used in self-defense.
What do the statistics show?
As Reason noted, the CDC is legally unable to study gun control. However, in the 1990s, the federal agency sought to learn how many Americans use firearms in defense situations on an annual basis. They apparently just never told anyone about it. Still, what they found confirmed what Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck learned on the issue in the 1990s.
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