The Defensive Gun Use (DGU).
Quite often, the gunloon will regale you with tales about how many lives were saved when gun-toting, law-abiding citizen exercised his Second Amendment God-given right to firearms and prevented a crime. This tale is called a defensive gun use or DGU. The gunloon will point out that the firearm may not have been fired–but merely brandished, causing criminal(s) to cease their criminal activities and flee the scene.
The patron saint of the DGU is a criminologist, Gary Kleck. Kleck has a number of studies as to the frequency of DGUs, ranging from 1M to 2.5M DGUs occurring annually in the US. There have been quite a number of folks who have issues with Kleck’s methodology.
But even if we assume Kleck’s methodology is flawless, there are problems with Kleck’s findings that are readily apparent. For example, Kleck’s own research states that in 8% of all DGUs, the gun is fired–wounding an alleged criminal. Kleck also notes that 15% of gun shot wounds are fatal. If we do the math: 2.5M DGUs x .08 woundings x .15 fatal wounds, we should have 30,000 justifiable gun homicides each year in the US.
Uh oh. The FBI Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) show under 300 justifiable homicides each year–from all causes, not just gun-related.
