> gun deaths
That's a meaningless stat. The point of my Chicago stat is that vast majority of the shootings are coming from gang members. A gang member shooting another gang member isn't a relevant stat. And shootings in self defence is one of the purposes of owning a gun (though not what the 2A is only for).
That's like saying my daughter would be safer to live in my home country India where she may not get shot but she may get raped late at night. Or like saying Afghanistan is safer somehow?
Estimated 800,000 to 2.45 million defensive uses of firearms per year in 1993 national survey.
https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS94/rpt/olr/htm/94-R-0798.htm
Another 2008 study by National Academy of Sciences showed 500,000 to more than 3 million "Defensive Use of Guns". Simply having the gun on your or brandishing it prevented crimes from happening. This was in 2008. That numbers is even higher now.
Source:
https://www.nap.edu/read/18319/chapter/3
Page 15 of the study talks about the defensive use part. You can download the PDF by using the "guest" option and entering any random email (doesn't have to be real). Another related source:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2018/04/30/that-time-...
> "Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million, in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008."
> "In 1996, 1997, and 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) conducted large-scale surveys asking about defensive gun use (DGU) in four to six states. Analysis of the raw data allows the estimation of the prevalence of DGU for those areas. Estimates based on CDC’s surveys confirm estimates for the same sets of states based on data from the 1993 National Self-Defense Survey (Kleck and Gertz 1995). Extrapolated to the U.S. as a whole CDC’s survey data imply that defensive uses of guns by crime victims are far more common than offensive uses by criminals. CDC has never reported these results."
> "One CDC official in the 1990s openly told the Washington Post that his goal was to create a public perception of gun ownership as something “dirty, deadly — and banned.” Given that history, I can’t dismiss Kleck’s critique."
How do you propose these people - wives/daughters/elderly/handicapped/living close to cartels/over 800K-3 million defensive uses should defend themselves?
Also, U.S. has world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households, something which is well known for kids to grow up into criminals:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/12/12/u-s-childre...