Clayton Cramer has an article in the Washington Times outlining the fact that use of a gun in self-defense is more common than many people think. Way more common than our opponents will admit, even to themselves.
Our study examines a variety of incident types: concealed-weapon permit holders (285 accounts); home invasions (1,227 incidents); residential burglaries (488). There are categories that we would never have thought were all that common: 172 incidents where people defended themselves from animal attacks (some wild, some dogs gone wild); 34 were incidents where pizza delivery drivers defended themselves from robbery.
As Clayton mentions in the article, the low end, from the National Crime Victimization Survey, is 108,000 DGUs per year. That’s already higher than the much vaunted “gun death” rate suggested by our opponents. Self-defenses incidents are going to overwhelmingly end without the need for bloodshed with a defensive gun use. You have criminals who don’t want to get shot, combined with defenders who don’t want to shoot, and that’s a recipe for resolving confrontations without having to shoot someone.
Prison polls indicate the most common “defensive gun use” is no use at all. If the convicts are telling the truth, nearly ten million crimes are aborted each year because the intended victim might have a gun. That far outnumbers the actual faceoffs between criminal and citizen.
Stranger
Nearly everyone I know personally who has used a gun defensively against people never had to go beyond showing they had a gun. I know of many such events, none of which were ever reported.