Et Tu, CDC?

Guns and Ammo reports on the CDC's research into gun violence. 

The study was done after Obama issued an Executive Order in the wake of the horrendous shooting in December 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut.  The anti-gunners were certain that it would result in destruction of NRA and gun owner arguments about the benefits of firearms. 

Read G&A summary.

It's stuff we all knew.  Most "gun deaths" are suicides, not homicides.  Gun buy-backs are stupid and do not work.  Most criminals don't get their guns from gun shows or retail outlets, nor are they stolen.  Criminals get their guns from other criminals in the underground market.  I am so shocked. 

I really like this one:   

4. “Interventions” (i.e, gun control) such as background checks, so-called assault rifle bans and gun-free zones produce “mixed” results:

“Whether gun restrictions reduce firearm-related violence is an unresolved issue.” The report could not conclude whether “passage of right-to-carry laws decrease or increase violence crime.”

Right.  Unresolved is another way of saying that the research really didn't turn out the way we like.  In fairness, though, they are often dealing with very small numbers when comparing various jurisdictions and statistical significance is probably tough to get.

The first two points shut down 90% of the anti-self-defense arguments:

1. Armed citizens are less likely to be injured by an attacker:
“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.”

2. Defensive uses of guns are common:
“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 more than 3 million per year…in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008.”

If the anti-gunners had facts on their side, they would use them.  They do not.  They depend on emotional responses to images of dead children and grieving parents.