| DATE: | April 21, 2020 |
| TO: | USF & NRA Members and Friends |
| FROM: | Marion P. Hammer |
| USF Executive Director | |
| NRA Past President |
Anti-gun forces are always quick to report the use of firearms in violent crimes – but they never talk about the number of times law-abiding people use a firearm successfully in lawful self-defense. Published in the 1990s, “Point Blank” by Dr. Gary Kleck, a criminologist and researcher from Florida State University, destroyed the arguments of gun control proponents.
His research revealed that crime among people who carry guns for self-defense is almost nonexistent.
His study found that a firearm is used to protect it’s owner, from crime, approximately 2.5 million times a year. Additionally, those findings show that for every time a gun is used in the commission of crime, a gun is used 3-4 more times in self-defense.
The Heritage Foundation is now introducing a database of defensive gun use.
Loading a New Database of Defensive Gun Use
By Amy Swearer
Daily Signal
April 20, 2020
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/04/20/loading-a-new-database-of-defensive-gun-use/
Amy Swearer is a senior legal policy analyst at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
For well over a year, The Daily Signal has published a monthly series highlighting lawful gun owners who used their firearms to protect their liberties, lives, or livelihoods.
Although these articles recount just a dozen or so stories each month, the incidents are selected from hundreds of other, similar examples.
Those defensive gun usesare worth highlighting, too. That’s why The Heritage Foundation is introducing its Defensive Gun Use Database, an interactive map featuring all of the news accounts from police reports that we couldn’t fit into installments of the monthly series.
What’s the Defensive Gun Use Database?
The database features an interactive map that allows users to locate instances of defensive gun use in their own states and cities.
Clicking on a specific dot on the map provides the user with an instant breakdown of important information about the incident of defensive gun use that the dot represents.
For example, users can see the date and location of the defensive gun use, what type of firearm was involved, and the context in which the gun was used—including to defend against a home invasion, armed robbery, or domestic violence).
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost all major studies on defensive gun use have found that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year. Researchers have good reason to believe, however, that most defensive gun uses aren’t reported to law enforcement, much less picked up by local or national media outlets… https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/04/20/loading-a-new-database-of-defensive-gun-use/
Read More Articles on this subject…
https://www.heritage.org/search?contains=Defensive+Gun+Use+Database