Legal use of guns saves lives

 Fox News:

Americans across the country have used legal guns to defend themselves and thwart crimes, but the reports often fly under the radar and most people are unaware how often guns are used in self-defense cases.

"Having a gun is by far the safest course of action when people are facing a criminal by themselves," Dr. John Lott, an economist and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, told Fox News Digital. He pointed to women in particular, who "behave passively" and are "about 2.4 times more likely to end up being seriously injured than a woman who has a gun to protect herself."

As crimes skyrocketed in major cities since 2020, instances of women using guns to protect themselves and stop crimes have repeatedly played out.

"Thank God I had my gun, or I’d probably be dead right now," a Chicago woman with a concealed carry permit said in October after two would-be carjackers approached her outside a bank.

In New Orleans just last week, a mom and Air Force veteran pulled a gun on a man who tried to get into her car while she was sitting in gridlocked traffic with her 2-year-old son. She wasn’t forced to fire the weapon and the suspect took off.

Lott said that, in a typical year, the media reports about 2,000 defensive gun use stories, but he added "that is a dramatic undercount, because the vast majority of successful self-defense cases don’t make the news."

STUDY SHOWS CONCEALED HANDGUN PERMITS SOARED DURING PANDEMIC, RECORD YEAR-OVER-YEAR INCREASE

Lott said there are about 2 million defensive gun uses per year, according to the average of 18 national surveys.

The Heritage Foundation, which launched a database tracking how often guns are used in self-defense cases, cites the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention which looked at various studies and found "that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year."

"The reality is, I think this number shocks a lot of people," Amy Swearer, a legal fellow in the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation, told Fox News Digital in a phone interview.
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The potential threat of guns probably stops many assaults from happening in homes across America.  They are a serious deterrent to crime.