Miss Swearer hit a line drive out of the park again
11 Defensive Gun Uses Show How Lawful Gun Owners ‘Get It Right’
Often lost in conversations about gun violence is the reality of who is responsible for the bulk of that violence. Most gun crimes aren’t committed by lawful gun owners but by a small subset of repeat violent offenders who already are prohibited from legally possessing firearms.
At the same time, the vast majority of the nation’s millions of lawful gun owners will never use their firearms to harm themselves or others (excluding, of course, actions taken in lawful self-defense).
Nevertheless, sometimes people make questionable—or even downright abhorrent—decisions with their lawfully owned firearms. This was quite apparent in recent weeks as several gun owners made national headlines for all the wrong reasons, recklessly resorting to the use of lethal force when it likely wasn’t warranted.
Although these individuals rightly should have their actions scrutinized, the reality is that Americans with legally possessed guns are far more likely to “get it right” than they are to “get it wrong.”
Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from past months and years. You also may follow @DailyDGU on Twitter for daily highlights of recent defensive gun uses.)
