What would be the number?

[needledriver]

3. I don't.

That's why I say "who may very well have lost their lives had they not been able to defend themselves". It's impossible to determine with any certainty whether the actual outcome of an encounter where someone used a firearms defensively would have resulted in a death had the firearm not been available to the defender. That's one reason why I went for the lowest of the lowball estimates of defensive gun use. I figure the actual number of defensive gun uses falls somewhere between the high estimate of around 2 1/2 million defensive gun uses and the low estimate of around 50,000. On the same basis, the actual number of lives saved by defensive gun uses probably ranges from somewhat less than 50,000 to somewhat less than 2 1/2 million.

Even without having hard numbers to work with, I figure it's a fair bet that more lives are saved by defensive gun use than are lost to firearms violence and accident.

Even so, if any lives at all are saved by defensive gun use - don't those lives count, too? It doesn't have to be a ratio. Lives saved by defensive gun uses have a distinct value all their own, which does not need to be balanced against the number of lives lost to firearms violence and accident. You must factor every life saved into your calculations of the value of the 2nd Amendment.