Differing opinions on this, I don't trust many "studies" on this, but I really don't think you can make a statement of fact that cannot be refuted by someone, facts and opinions are varied and should not be confused. Just one link of many:
CDC Study: Use of Firearms For Self-Defense is
Yes, the accuracy and relevance of studies need to be carefully considered along with the various interpretations people derive from them, granted.
Defensive Gun Use (DGU) numbers are very squishy since there is no formal data collection associated with them in contrast to the required reporting of violent injury and death by LE, hospitals and coroners. The various studies reach widely differing conclusions about the real number of DGU incidents. A lot of survey data used is getting aged, perhaps beyond relevance given the pace of increasing gun ownership. There is no standard definition of what constitutes DGU or situational breakdown within that definition as is the case with reported deaths and injuries.
I haven't read the 2013 CDC report referenced in the linked articles. I seem to run into "buy the book" when I look for the actual report. There is this 2010 CDC report
Surveillance for Violent Deaths but it doesn't include DGU statistics.
EDIT: I found it. Here is the 2013 report:
Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence
From the Limitations section:
Finally, protective factor data (i.e., characteristics or circumstances that reduce the risk for violent death) are not collected by NVDRS because of the nature of death certificate, coroner/medical examiner records, and law enforcement reports, which typically contain only circumstances associated with risk factors.
Defensive Gun Use (Part I) - The CDC Report on Gun Violence
REVIEW OF CDC REPORT
The CDC report on gun violence was over 120 pages in length, but sadly had very little to say about defensive gun use. I will summarize their findings in list fashion
* According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, between 2007 and 2011, over 600,000 people reported facing an assailant armed with a gun.
* According to the FBI, 3% of firearm assaults known to police result in a death.
* According to a Pew Survey, 鍍he vast majority of gun owners say that having a gun makes them feel safer. And far more today than in 1999 cite protection rather than hunting and other activities as the main reason for why they own guns (Pew Research Center, 2013)
* Four studies have been done showing that crime victims who actively used a gun to defend themselves had lower rates of injury than crime victims who did not use guns to defend themselves - Kleck 1988; Kleck and DeLone 1993; Tark and Kleck 2004; and Southwick 2000.
* Defensive gun use is a fact but it is difficult to count accurately.
* The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) has estimated that there are between 60,000 and 105,000 DGUs per year. Between the years 1992 and 1994, the NCVS reported there were in total 116,000 DGUs.
* Kleck and Gertz (1995) estimated the annual occurrence of DGUs to be around 2.5 million per year.
* The CDC report made no effort to reconcile the differing estimates of DGUs, except to note that the estimate provided by the Kleck group was larger by an order of magnitude than the estimate arising from the NCVS. The CDC report noted that the estimate of DGU provided by the Kleck group is twice again as large as the estimate of the Dept. of Justice that there are 1.3 million crimes committed with a gun in the USA every year.
* According to the CDC report: 典he 2005 National Research Council study found no persuasive evidence from available studies that passage of right to carry laws decrease or increase violent crime.
The take-home message by the CDC report on gun violence is that DGU does occur, and there are very large discrepancies in the available estimates. And sadly, the CDC report contains no suggestions for future research to better or more accurately assess DGU.
