EDITOR’S NOTE: This is one of a series of articles on gun rights. Each addresses a common anti-gun trope. This article builds on Gun Rights Lesson #488, which discusses mass shootings and offers a list of incidents where an armed civilian successfully acted against a mass shooter.

“Civilians with guns never actually stop crimes!”

Yes, they do. This deeply simplistic plaint (it doesn’t rise to the level of an argument, because the data is overwhelming) is either a naif’s fantasy or a cynic’s deliberate deception. Allow me to elaborate.

Any informed discussion of civilian use of firearms necessarily includes criminologist Gary Kleck’s seminal 1993 study on the subject, which concluded that defensive gun use (DGU) happened over 2 million times a year in America. The study has been the subject of much debate and controversy, of course. Kleck has noted that numerous other studies support his figures and conclusions.

It also includes reference to John R. Lott’s research on the topic, and to his book More Guns Less Crime. Both researchers’ work is worth perusing directly, so rather than attempting to recount it here, I’ll simply offer the well-researched conclusions as part of the rebuttal of the “guns don’t stop crime” fallacy.

While detractors, and there are many, have done a lot of handwaving to try and discredit Kleck’s and Lott’s work, I’m not going to pursue the path of validation or invalidation here either. It’s been done countless times, as even the most perfunctory Google search will demonstrate. You will find that many attempts at invalidation are themselves deconstructed as shoddy or tendentious, but I will give them some heed in the interest of completeness.

The question at hand is more binary. Many who assert that people should not be permitted to carry guns for self-defense allege that successful DGU simply doesn’t happen.

It does.

• From March 2017, Six DGUs In Six Days.

• From the NRA, the Armed Citizen pages, which list almost-daily DGU occurrences.

• From October 2015, 21 DGUs Covered By The Media

• It Happened To Me stories.

• A Dozen In A Week.

• A resource for Women’s Defense Stories.

That’s just a smattering. Any internet search offers a flood of anecdotes demonstrating that, yes, DGUs happen all the time.

What it doesn’t tell us is the frequency with which DGUs go unreported. When brandishing a firearm or racking the action of a shotgun is sufficient to send an assailant fleeing, the incident can easily go unreported and untallied, and research shows it often does. This is what makes the DGU question a tough one. Kleck’s work attempted to answer it, and his detractors focus on it as the focal point of rebuttal.

Kleck’s analysis, based on anonymous telephone polling, suggests 2.5 million DGUs each year. His detractors argue that people are likely to overstate DGUs, and one source claims the number is more like 100,000. Before we contemplate the numbers themselves, lets consider the detractors’ argument: that people are going to over-state DGU when polled. Consider: Lets suppose you are a gun owner, and are asked, supposedly anonymously, to take a poll regarding guns and gun use. Lets say you had an incident, a random encounter with a stranger in a place not your home or property, in your past where you felt physically threatened and drew your gun in self defense. Lets say that the assailant turned tail and ran. Would you call the police to report the incident? Would you tell the pollster about it? Or, given the hostility that parts of society and parts of government show gun owners, would you keep it to yourself? Given that assholes all around you will be happy to take your guns under the slightest pretense, are you more likely to brag about something that didn’t happen, or keep quiet about something that did?

Obviously, this is a subjective argument, not a validation of one figure or the other. But, lets accept the 100,000 figure as the low-end estimate of DGUs. Lets consider a range of 100K to 2.5M DGUs per year. Even the low end is a LARGE number. Even the low end is a whole lot of people defending themselves or other potential victims from harm, or their property from trespass and theft, with guns, every year. Even the low estimate puts the lie to the assertion that this Gun Rights Lesson addresses.

Here’s where many facts-don’t-matter anti-gun folks will switch gears and jump on other reasons why you shouldn’t own a gun. You’ll be told that your gun is more likely to be used against you than in successful self defense (GRL#592 – forthcoming), that other countries have fewer guns and less gun crime (GRL#239 – forthcoming), that, for the safety of society, only the police should have guns (GRL#513), or that they simply want “sensible” gun regulation (GRL#551), that they’re currently too easy to buy (GRL#202 – forthcoming), that you shouldn’t object to their being treated, say, the way driver’s licenses are treated (GRL#313), and that, now that Trump won (GRL#339), your gun rights are safe ((GRL#831). All these qualify as “moving the goalposts” or “changing the subject” fallacies, and they do nothing to support the initial claim that guns don’t get used for self-defense.

Those that don’t move the goalposts may still attempt a utilitarian argument – that even if some people do successfully use guns in self-defense, the aggregate numbers would work in society’s favor if guns were banned or restricted to a degree that greatly diminished legitimate DGU and left it up to the police to protect you. We could take the bait and argue the utilitarian perspective, and we’d still win. On multiple fronts, the simplest of which is that you cannot argue from a utilitarian position while assuming the utopian, idealistic notion that guns could be effectively “disappeared” from the nation as one of your options. Bad guys will always be able to get guns.

But, no utilitarian “society as a whole” argument will do you a hill-of-beans amount of good if a bad guy’s coming at you or invading your home. As the old saying goes, when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

UPDATE, APRIL 21, 2018
As recently reported by Reason, it turns out that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) conducted “high quality” surveys regarding DGUs in the 1990s. These studies, which the CDC didn’t bother to publicize or release, and which were just recently dug up by Kleck, corroborate Kleck’s research that showed over 2 million DGUs per year.

Why would the CDC, a purportedly non-partisan organization devoted to science, not release this information? Could it be that this non-partisan, science-focused, above-reproach organization decided it wasn’t in the government’s interest to shine a light on a truth that ran against a popular (in some circles) narrative?

So,

Gun rights lesson #109: Civilians do use guns to stop crime all the time. Both anecdote and research prove it. Those who claim otherwise are either lying or ignoring reality.

• About the Author

About Peter Venetoklis

I am twice-retired, a former rocket engineer and a former small business owner. At the very least, it makes for interesting party conversation. I'm also a life-long libertarian, I engage in an expanse of entertainments, and I squabble for sport.

Nowadays, I spend a good bit of my time arguing politics and editing this website.

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