I read somewhere that 95% of cases of DGU (Defensive Gun Use) do not actually involve discharging the weapon.
I think that statistic comes from a
very problematic study.
Basically, the gun lobby likes to counter the reality of the many firearm deaths in America with claims that guns help prevent crimes ... but official statistics never bore that out. So they promoted the idea that most instances of defensive gun use are not reported, and Gary Kleck picked up the ball for them and ran with it.
Now, there are problems with official statistics, but rather than trying to address them, Kleck used existing statistics derived elsewhere to extrapolate to national defensive gun use estimates.
And I think anyone on this forum should be savvy enough with numbers to recognize that his methods were garbage.
If you step back and ask yourself, "Recognizing that many instances of defensive gun use are not reported in official statistics, what is the best way to get a good estimate of them?" I think you end up with something very much like what was done in
two Harvard surveys.
Their conclusion: "Guns are used to threaten and intimidate far more often than they are used in self defense. Most self reported self defense gun uses may well be illegal and against the interests of society."
I have a friend who happens to be a gun nut who, on an unrelated topic, says that he'd be all for nudism if he got to choose who would partake of it. I tell him that that's my attitude toward gun ownership.