One of the difficult things to quantify about defensive gun uses, is how often they occur without a shot being fired. The survey information indicates that it happens somewhere between a few hundred thousand to a few million times per year in the United States. With the Internet, we are becoming more aware of these events. Sometimes, they are reported in local media.
It in the vast majority of cases, there is no report to police; if there is a police report, there is no media coverage; if there is media coverage, it is strictly local. I recall numerous students and friends telling me of incidents where they used a gun defensively without ever firing a shot. None of these incidents had any media coverage.
The Internet has expanded the transmission of information by many orders of magnitude, so we now find out about a fraction of cases that are mostly never heard of. I read about the following case on opencarry.org. I have not been able to find any media coverage. Leicajh reports from opencarry.org:
I live out in the county. , Around 1/2 mile from me a bad guy tried a home invasion on Daniels Road. This happened just 30 minutes ago. Bad guy tried to bang the door down while the good guys wife called the sheriff. Bad guy picked the wrong door. Good guy held the bad guy at gun point, ( God Bless Texas ) until the Deputies could transport him to the jail.. Turns out, the Bad guy was on a major parol violation from the State of Texas Prison System, and was to considered armed and extremely dangerous. A very good ending of what might have been very bad. Look up the Otero family murders in Wichita Kansas. I was a Deputy Sheriff there. At dark, as Susan, my daughter can attest, I never answer my door unarmed. Sorry Susan about you former boy friend. HThe location was listed as near Wichita Falls, Texas.
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The problem, of course, is that people develop a false sense of reality. I have talked to many people who claim that self defense with a gun "never happens" because "I have never read about a singe case where it happened". This is how ideological editorial decisions (on the few cases that reach an editor's desk) misshape peoples' understanding of the world. Add to this the natural tendency to pay attention to blood and violence, while ignoring less dramatic defenses where no one is shot, and false impressions of the utility of firearms are created and furthered.
©2014 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice is included.
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