Stats on legal firearm use

[Dave09]

I am trying to find out if there is any kind of stats on legal firearm use in the United States. This would any firearm instance where they used it to defend themselves or others legally. I tried searching the forum but was unable to find anything. I also have not been able to find anything on google. I kind of doubt that it's out there but with roughly 11,000 people killed a year by someone using a firearm I would hope some kind of stat is out there. I know that it is probably a good amount because I see the self defense thread and seems like there is a new one every other day. That is also only what's covered on the news.

[Pawpaw]

What you're asking for is very difficult to nail down. So many lawful gun uses do not involve a shot being fired and are never reported.

Probably the best resource around is Crime Prevention Research Center, founded by Dr. John R. Lott, Jr.

[jmra]

"In the U.S., there are 1.5 million defensive gun incidents per year. That's about 125,000 per month and well over 4,000 per day."
http://www.secondcalldefense.org/why-yo ... statistics

Looks like estimates are all over the place. Research by Gary Kleck, an accomplished criminologist at Florida State University puts the estimate over 2 million annually. On the low side, even the most ardent gun control enthusiast will concede 100,000 instances annually. The issue seems to be defining what constitutes an actual use of a firearm in self defense. Some argue that the presence of a gun itself causing a criminal to move on to a softer target constitutes use of a firearm in self defense where others don't count it unless the criminal is shot by non LEO.

[ELB]

Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens by Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett is also a good resource.

The data upon which it is based were collected specifically because a certain academic professor claimed that guns were never actually used in any legitimate self-defense situation. Clayton Cramer knew that was nonsense, and began collecting newspaper stories of defensive gun uses (DGU). He and David Burnett and another person whose name escapes me collected just under 5000 articles over 2003-2008 before they stopped. I contributed some stories myself. Then Cramer and Burnett wrote a white paper on it. The link above takes you to the Cato Institute, which hosts the white paper in PDF form (free download) or will sell you a bound copy.

Interesting statistic from the paper: Out of 4,668 DGU reports collected, in 338 instances a person wielding a gun was disarmed. In only eleven cases was the "good guy" disarmed (and in one of those, when the good guy' rifle was taken, he drew his handgun and shot one of his assailants). In the other 227 cases, the intended victim disarmed his or her attacker.

Although not in the dataset for that paper, here's another example of that which occurred just this week apparently: Woman kills attacker with his gun, unknowingly takes out a serial killer

[ELB]

http://guncite.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is also a good repository of 2A-related info that includes some statistical information.

[Javier730]

Nothing with stats but thearmedcitizen.com has plenty of stories where firearms have been legally used.