How Often Do Citizens Use Guns to Stop Violence? - Just Facts

How Often Do Citizens Use Guns to Stop Violence? - Just Facts
"In a New York Times column entitled “How to Reduce Shootings,” Nicholas Kristof writes, “It is true that guns are occasionally used to stop violence. But contrary to what the National Rifle Association suggests, this is rare. One study by the Violence Policy Center found that in 2012 there were 259 justifiable homicides by a private citizen using a firearm.”
That statement grossly misleads by pretending that firearms only stop violence when they are used to kill criminals.
As explained by the National Academies of Sciences in a 300+ page analysis of firearms studies, “effective defensive gun use need not ever lead the perpetrator to be wounded or killed. 
Rather, to assess the benefits of self-defense, one needs to measure crime and injury averted.
The particular outcome of an offender is of little relevance.”
...Contrary to Kristof’s deceitful claim, a range of credible data suggests that civilians use guns to stop violence more than 100,000 times per year.
,,,Anti-gun researcher David McDowall and others conducted a major survey of defensive gun use that was published by the Journal of Quantitative Criminology in 2000.
...the results imply that U.S. civilians use guns to defend themselves and others from crime at least 990,000 times per year. 
This figure accounts only for “clear” cases of defensive gun use and is based upon a weighting calculation designed to minimize defensive gun uses.
Similarly, a 1994 survey conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] found that Americans use guns to frighten away intruders who are breaking into their homes about 498,000 times per year..."
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