The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has restored its estimate of annual defensive gun uses to the agency's public website, reversing a removal that occurred quietly during the Biden administration after pressure from gun-control advocacy groups. The data, now back on the CDC's "About Firearm Injury and Death" page, states that Americans use firearms defensively between 60,000 and 2.5 million times each year.

AmmoLand first reported the restoration, with Bearing Arms following on August 24 and noting that anti-gun organizations were publicly critical of the change, arguing the higher estimates in the range rely on methodologies they dispute. The CDC page does not take a position on which end of the range is most accurate, presenting the full band as what the available research shows.

The underlying figure traces to a 2013 report commissioned by the CDC itself from the National Academies of Sciences, which reviewed the defensive gun use literature and found consistent evidence that the number runs into the hundreds of thousands annually at minimum, with some studies suggesting a figure approaching 2.5 million. That National Academies report was produced in response to an executive directive from President Obama following the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting — making the source document a product of a Democratic administration, a point gun-rights advocates have highlighted in ongoing debates about which research the CDC chose to elevate and which it chose to suppress.

The Biden-era removal was reported at the time by gun-rights organizations including the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action and Gun Owners of America, who characterized it as an effort to scrub federally produced research that complicated the case for restrictive gun legislation. The Trump administration's Department of Health and Human Services, under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has reversed that decision as part of a broader effort to address perceived politicization of federal health agency data.

The restoration carries practical significance beyond its symbolic weight. Defensive gun use estimates are regularly cited in legal briefs and legislative testimony involving firearms regulations, and data hosted on a federal agency's website carries institutional credibility that academic citations alone do not. The range of 60,000 to 2.5 million is now once again visible to anyone researching firearms policy through official government channels, and gun-rights organizations have indicated they intend to make full use of it.