In Tough Targets, Clayton E. Cramer and David Burnett examine news reports of defensive gun uses in America.
Many people support gun control regulations because they are convinced that the average citizen is either incapable of using a gun in self-defense or will use the gun in a fit of anger over some petty matter. Those assumptions are false. The evidence on this point has grown so strong that even President Obama has had to chide gun safety advocates to accept the proposition that “almost all gun owners in America are highly responsible.” And, as the scores of incidents described in this study show, gun owners stop a lot of criminal mayhem — attempted murders, rapes, assaults, robberies — every year.