Guns are Rarely Used to Kill Criminals or Stop Crimes New VPC Analysis Reveals

[Recursion]

1. I dunno? 237,000 defensive uses of firearms?

That sounds like a lot to me.

And another 100,000 uses during attempted property crimes?

More than a Third of Persons Shot and Killed in Justifiable Homicides in 2010 Were Known to the Shooter

Well... yes. I'm not sure why this is a surprise; most violent attackers are known to their victims.

What is most striking is that in a nation of more than 300 million guns, how rarely firearms are used in self-defense.

Hmm.. they showed that over the past 5 years, about 1% of guns have been used in self defense. I'm not sure what they were imagining, but that sounds about right to me, coming from the "yes, defensive gun use exists" side of this argument.

We have here 237,000 uses over a 5 year period during which there have been roughly 40,000 homicides using a gun, or about 6 defensive uses for every homicide.