Damn, can we stop with the stupid. Every one of those flippin studies are phone surveys. They call someone up, ask them if they have used a gun in defense in the last year or so, and completely accept their response. Total horseshit.
To me, the biggest problem is time biased. I mean the person responding may have actually used their gun in defense, but not in the last year. The event happened three years ago. That greatly distorts the results.
But perhaps the bigger problem is that, other than the word of the respondent, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that backs up those results. Defensive gun use is as common as a crime, seriously? That makes no damn sense. I mean let's be honest, if some gun owner actually stopped a crime, it would be posted on every damn gun nut site on the internet, screamed from the highest tower, and trumpeted out for everyone to see. I mean we see this, there are dozens of links posted in this thread of exactly that, just not a couple million a year.
I mean come on, one study listed, nineteen people, nineteen people responded positively to the question, and then 1.5 million defensive use of guns is extrapolated from that. Damn, that is comically stupid. Like I have pointed out, using the same method two million Americans have been abducted by aliens. If true, that would be a major problem.