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All due respect to everyone who has been posting case examples as part of the discussion here, but unfortunately in the end, they are just that, empirical examples that don't indicate are represent what the real trends are.
What I don't see is what the actual rates are of successful defense against crime through use of a legal firearm in the hands of a would-be victim. I've seen these stats before and they seemed extremely low especially given the number of guns legally owned in America. But unfortunately, I saved them on a hard drive long since melted, and thus can't readily lay my hands on them. I am going to start looking, but if someone knows where to tack such specific data, I'd appreciate it.
The kind of data I'm looking for:
* Percentage of violent crimes in which the victim or intervening bystander produced a firearm.
* Number of these cases in which the crime was successfully stopped/deterred.
* Number of these cases where a victim's or bystander's gun ended up in the hands of the criminal.
* Number of these cases that resulted in a fatality
And stats about the cost of gun ownership:
* Number of cases in which a legally owned gun was used to commit a crime.
* Fatalities by legally-owned guns (minus self-defense)
* Victims of their own legally-owned firearms
Without knowing these numbers, and instead just relying on who can dig up more and better case examples from the news. AS interesting these are and as important as real-world cases are, they don't tell the whole picture, and relying on them can create a very distorted view of the big picture. I'll be looking for this data, but if anyone beats me to the punch, that'd be great, I'd love to see some good data being put up here to add to the discussion.
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