Gun crimes grab most media attention, while gun use in self-defense gets merely a fraction: experts

[EdinVA]

Gun crimes grab most media attention, while gun use in self-defense gets merely a fraction: experts

Americans across the country have used legal guns to defend themselves and thwart crimes, but the reports often fly under the radar and most people are unaware how often guns are used in self-defense cases.


"Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves," Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital. He pointed to women in particular, who "behave passively" and are "about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself."

Lott said there are about 2 million defensive gun uses per year, according to the average of 18 national surveys.
The Heritage Foundation, which launched a database tracking how often guns are used in self-defense cases, cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which looked at various studies and found "that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year."


https://www.foxnews.com/us/americans-guns-self-defense-thwart-crimes-data

[goatprairie]

This has been the case since I've been reading about citizens and guns for half a century or more.
The media would have you believe that guns in the hands of average citizens have never been successfully used for self defense. They love to print/air stories of little children killed by guns their parents left lying around. Or the lunatic who kills people at work with his guns.
So the average person is led to believe that guns are never used for legitimate self defense. It would help if GOP pols would say things publicly about the use of guns by average citizens to prevent or stop crimes from happening.