There is no evidence this is true. What is true, is that when surveyed, gun owners will recall many defensive gun uses. It is unclear if this is an artifact of telescoping bias, or most likely, they remember that time they brandished a gun at someone innocent as "self defense". https://twitter.com/NRA/status/1198331962391486464

But what is notably absent is actual, unbiased, confirmation of these supposed defensive gun uses. At rate they claim, gun owners would prevent a crime every 10 seconds or so.

That means daily, in the US, there would be ~8,200 DGUs.

They can actually prove *10 in one month*.

The methodology that generates that number is subject to so many biases, that when an absurd number like 3 million is generated, you shouldn't rush to report that, you should instead re-evaluate the methodology and see if you can do better.

But, they're ideological morons, so once they got a number they liked, they never let it go, in spite of all the contrary evidence that defensive gun use is extraordinarily rare compared to offensive gun use - the thing that keeps killing us because there are too many guns.

We should make policy based on hard data. At 10/mo, the observed rate is about 1/25,000th of what this bogus estimate suggests. It's not just slightly wrong, it's a complete absurdity.

Compare that to how many die from guns a month - over 3,000.

So, for a fantasy - a completely absurd estimate that is never validated *in the real world* - the NRA insists we suffer 3000 deaths a month, about 2-3 times as many injuries, and uncounted threats and assaults.

To protect their fantasy, we must experience real-life terror.

Receipts - defensive gun uses are misremembered offensive uses. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12183892_Gun_use_in_the_United_States_results_from_two_national_surveys