The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issues an annual estimate of the number of people nonfatally injured by guns, but even by the agency’s own standards, its recent numbers may not be trustworthy. This year’s estimate is less reliable than ever, The Trace reports. According to the CDC’s most recent figures, somewhere between 31,000 and 236,000 people were injured by guns in 2017. That range, which represents the high and low ends of a range of estimates that probably contains the real number, is almost four times wider than the one given in the agency’s 2001 estimate. “When I looked at the 2017 numbers, I went, ‘Oh, my God,’” said David Hemenway of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. “You just can’t use those numbers.”
The CDC acknowledges its estimates are unreliable, but its figures are still widely used by researchers, journalists and the general public. That the latest numbers have become even more uncertain suggests that the CDC can’t be counted on to estimate the number of gun injuries in the U.S. The agency’s 2016 and 2017 estimates are flagged with a note cautioning that the figures are “unstable and potentially unreliable.” “We accept that there are some unstable estimates,” said CDC spokesperson Courtney Lenard. “CDC continues to look into various ways to strengthen the estimates for nonfatal firearm injuries.” The Trace and FiveThirtyEight have reported that the rising trend in the number of nonfatal gunshot wounds in the CDC’s estimates was out of step with trends reported by other public health and criminal justice databases, which found flat or declining numbers of these injuries. The agency sources its data from a small number of hospitals: just 60 in 2017, found a public records request by The Trace and FiveThirtyEight.