Determining the exact count is difficult. If you look at the wikipedia page on defensive gun use, you see that since it’s not centrally tracked and many go unreported, the only way to get any sort of number is with phone surveys and statistical analysis. That leaves a lot of opening to interpretation of the data.
Thus you have anti-gun researchers like Hemenway who put it at ~60,000 incidents/year and pro-gun researchers like Lott who put it at 2-4 million incidents/year. (I say anti/pro gun because Hemenway’s other writings advocate for gun control, while Lott’s other writings advocate against gun control). Obviously the number is somewhere in the middle.
But the firearm homicide rate (excluding suicides) is around 10k-15k/year, which means even if you only go with worst case data it means there’s 4x more DGUs as there are firearm homicides.
I’ll give you that’s a slightly apples to oranges comparison, as many firearm assaults don’t end in death.
But the real issue IMHO, which is unfortunately not tracked AFAIK, is how many gun crimes are committed with legal guns. IE, legally purchased/owned guns by a non-prohibited gun owner. That IMHO is some data that would really help settle the issue.
I’d argue that the lion’s share of those 10-15k homicides per year are committed with illegal guns / prohibited owners, they are gang and drug related. The problem is that’s often hard to prove and it doesn’t show up in data sets. For example, you have incidents in sites like ‘mass shooting tracker’ like:
‘On friday at 11pm, victim1 and victim2 were leaving a house party in the 12,000 block of Nowhere St. Two unknown males opened fire from a moving vehicle. Victim1 and victim2 were wounded, along with bystander1 and bystander2 who were injured non-critically.’
Now that’s a ‘mass shooting’ because 4 people got shot. Read between the lines and it’s ‘gangland drive-by’. But you can’t prove that as the victims won’t admit to being in a gang and the perps weren’t caught. But you can bet those guns were illegal and the car was stolen.
If you look at the wikipedia page on defensive gun use, you see that since it’s not centrally tracked and many go unreported
The definition of “defensive use” ranges from “discharged weapon at assailant” to “announced possession of weapon at scary noise”. So much of it relies on taking police reports at face value, no questions asked.
But the real issue IMHO, which is unfortunately not tracked AFAIK, is how many gun crimes are committed with legal guns. IE, legally purchased/owned guns by a non-prohibited gun owner. That IMHO is some data that would really help settle the issue.
I haven’t seen anything to suggest legality of ownership translates to defensiveness of use.
And none of this addresses the central problem of gun ownership - suicide. You are the person most likely to be killed by your own gun.
Determining the exact count is difficult. If you look at the wikipedia page on defensive gun use, you see that since it’s not centrally tracked and many go unreported, the only way to get any sort of number is with phone surveys and statistical analysis. That leaves a lot of opening to interpretation of the data.
Thus you have anti-gun researchers like Hemenway who put it at ~60,000 incidents/year and pro-gun researchers like Lott who put it at 2-4 million incidents/year. (I say anti/pro gun because Hemenway’s other writings advocate for gun control, while Lott’s other writings advocate against gun control). Obviously the number is somewhere in the middle.
But the firearm homicide rate (excluding suicides) is around 10k-15k/year, which means even if you only go with worst case data it means there’s 4x more DGUs as there are firearm homicides.
I’ll give you that’s a slightly apples to oranges comparison, as many firearm assaults don’t end in death.
But the real issue IMHO, which is unfortunately not tracked AFAIK, is how many gun crimes are committed with legal guns. IE, legally purchased/owned guns by a non-prohibited gun owner. That IMHO is some data that would really help settle the issue.
I’d argue that the lion’s share of those 10-15k homicides per year are committed with illegal guns / prohibited owners, they are gang and drug related. The problem is that’s often hard to prove and it doesn’t show up in data sets. For example, you have incidents in sites like ‘mass shooting tracker’ like:
‘On friday at 11pm, victim1 and victim2 were leaving a house party in the 12,000 block of Nowhere St. Two unknown males opened fire from a moving vehicle. Victim1 and victim2 were wounded, along with bystander1 and bystander2 who were injured non-critically.’
Now that’s a ‘mass shooting’ because 4 people got shot. Read between the lines and it’s ‘gangland drive-by’. But you can’t prove that as the victims won’t admit to being in a gang and the perps weren’t caught. But you can bet those guns were illegal and the car was stolen.
The definition of “defensive use” ranges from “discharged weapon at assailant” to “announced possession of weapon at scary noise”. So much of it relies on taking police reports at face value, no questions asked.
I haven’t seen anything to suggest legality of ownership translates to defensiveness of use.
And none of this addresses the central problem of gun ownership - suicide. You are the person most likely to be killed by your own gun.