You probably also want to mention that the criminologists who conducted that survey concluded that the raw estimate of 1.5 million was wildly inflated, and also that the raw number of DGUs is a useless number in any case because it is impossible to tell whether so-called "defensive gun uses" actually add or detract from human safety. And this is because these surveys don't actually try to verify whether a gun use is actually "defensive", they just take the word of the person answering the survey.
The number of civilian defensive gun uses (DGUs) against criminal attackers is
regularly invoked in public policy debates as a benefit of widespread private
ownership of firearms. Yet there is considerable uncertainty for the prevalence
of civilian DGUs, with estimates ranging from 108,000 (using the National Crime
Victimization Survey) to 2.5 million (using smaller telephone surveys) per year.
In this paper we analyze the results of a new national random-digit-dial telephone
survey to estimate the prevalence of DGU and then discuss the plausibility of
the results in light of other well-known facts and possible sources of bias in
survey data for sensitive behaviors. Because DGU is a relatively rare event by
any measure, a small proportion of respondents who falsely report a gun use can
produce substantial overestimates of the prevalence of DGU, even if every true
defensive gun user conceals his or her use. We find that estimates from this new
survey are apparently subject to a large positive bias, which calls into question
the accuracy of DGU estimates based on data from general-population surveys.
Our analysis also suggests that available survey data are not able to determine
whether reported DGU incidents, even if true, add to or detract from public
health and safety.
http://home.uchicago.edu/~ludwigj/papers/JQC-CookLudwig-DefensiveGunUses-1998.pdf
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