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I read somewhere about a study which suggested that some ridiculous high number of gun uses (90+% if memory serves) were resolved without discharging the gun. T

I read somewhere about a study which suggested that some ridiculous high number of gun uses (90+% if memory serves) were resolved without discharging the gun. The thing is, these situations were rarely, if ever, reported (and if they were, it's often up to speculation if the situations would actually have led to a crime), leading to a systematic difficulty in accurately deciding the effectiveness of guns in crime prevention. The point is, if someone pulls a gun, and you run away, they have very likely achieved their goal, and are unlikely to discharge the gun.

hga 14y ago
Bingo, and it's many studies; amusingly, the first was done with data collected by gun grabbers, and it had lower numbers since it didn't ask if the respondent had used a gun in self-defense more than once during the year. Current numbers put self-defense gun uses at something like 2.25 million per year, with indeed way over 90% never involving a gun being discharged. There's also a systematic difficulty in the other direction, I'm pretty sure most criminal uses of guns also don't involve it being discharged. And some fraction of those don't get reported to the police or then reported accurately, you'd need to start with the national crime survey data.