Gun scholar John Lott discovered a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) “coding error” which hid the fact that accidental gun deaths hit a record low in 2014.

Lott is the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center and the author of The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies.

According to Fox News, the CDC reported “586” accidental gun deaths in 2014. Lott studied the numbers and realized they were inflated by 100; the reported number should have been “486.” Lott described the CDC’s error as “a big mistake” and said it had the effect of suppressing news that the U.S. had “the lowest number [of accidental gun deaths] on record despite the explosion in gun sales and concealed carry permits.”

Lott explained that the CDC’s mistake “was not technically isolated to any particular state, but because of the nature of the error, data from some states (TN, NC) were affected more than others in 2014.” This meant TN accidental gun deaths were reported as having jumped from 19 to 105. In reality, Lott said TN’s accidental gun deaths should have been reported as “5.”

To make matters worse, gun control groups like the Safe Tennessee Project (STP) grabbed the inaccurate numbers and implemented them in their campaign for gun storage laws. STP took the numbers down once the CDC error was uncovered, but those who saw them in the gun control campaign cannot unsee them.

Lott alerted the CDC to the error “at the beginning of 2016” and “it took months” for the government agency to correct the error.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.