And we all know it?
While there is absolutely no doubt that firearms can be misused and tragedies often result, it is also true that firearms can be used for legitimate self defense and are.
I could post numerous links to demonstrate this fact but the effort would probably be futile as you would apparently believe that these stories were all fiction.
No survey on defensive gun use claimed that it never happened.
Defensive gun use
Defensive gun use (DGU) is the use of a firearm in self-defense or defense of others. The frequency of defensive firearms incidents, and their effectiveness in ensuring safety and reducing crime is a controversial issue in gun politics and criminology.[1]:64 Different authors and studies employ different criteria for what constitutes a defensive gun use, which at times leads to controversy in comparing statistical results. Perceptions of the number of DGUs dominate discussions over gun rights, gun control, and concealed carry laws.
Estimates of frequency
Estimates over the number of defensive gun uses vary wildly, depending on the study's population, criteria, time-period studied, and other factors. Higher end estimates by Kleck and Getz cite between 1 to 2.5 million DGUs in the United States each year.[1]:64-65[2][3] Low end estimates by Hemenway cite approximately 55,000-80,000 such uses each year.[4][5] Middle estimates have estimated approximately 1 million DGU incidents in the United States.[1]:65[6] The basis for the studies, the National Self-Defense Survey and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), vary in their methods, time-frames covered, and questions asked.[7] DGU questions were asked of all the NSDS sample.[3] Due to screening questions in the NCVS survey, only a minority of the NCVS sample were asked a DGU question.[8] Besides the NSDS and NCVS surveys, ten national and three state surveys summarized by Kleck and Gertz gave 764 thousand to 3.6 million DGU per year.[3] Hemenway contends the Kleck and Gertz study is unreliable and no conclusions can be drawn from it.[4] He argues that there are too many "false positives" in the surveys, and finds the NCVS figures more reliable, yielding estimates of around 100,000 defensive gun uses per year. Applying different adjustments, other social scientists suggest that between 250,000 and 370,000 incidences per year.[9]
Another survey including DGU questions was the National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms, NSPOF, conducted in 1994 by the Chiltons polling firm for the Police Foundation on a research grant from the National Institute of Justice. NSPOF projected 4.7 million DGU per year by 1.5 million individuals after weighting to eliminate false positives.[8] Discussion of over the number and nature of DGU and the implications to gun control policy came to a head in the late 1990s.[10][11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensive_gun_use
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