Utter bullshit. I think I finally figured out your mental disconnect. In your twisted world where guns only exist to kill people, you simply can't conceive of a world where people don't just wantonly kill people. Guns are used to prevent crimes ever single day. The VAST majority of the time they are not fired. They are merely brandished and that's enough. Amazingly enough, bad guys don't like getting shot.
The vast majority being, 12,499 times out of 12,500 incidents. That would mean gun owners wouldn't kill 99.992% of the time. Frankly, that would make you guys more highly disciplined than police or soldiers.
Or more logically, Kleck did a flawed study of only 5000 people and used a very low criteria that included rednecks shooting possums as a DGU.
They love to prey on defenseless people though, of that there is no doubt. But when the intended target is shown to be prepared and armed, well all of a sudden they lose interest in that target and move on to the next.
Yeah, you see, here's the thing. We aren't talking about Professor Moriarty here. We are talking about a common street thug who usually is just looking for a crime of opportunity. I simply don't see a lot of those guys being deterred that easily, especially when their crimes are often spurred by drugs or alcohol. I honestly don't see a crackhead being that easily deterred.
According to your bullshit view of the planet those uses don't count. "Guns are only meant to kill" is your mantra, well here you go SPAMBOT. No, they aren't. They are tools and the overwhelming majority of the time they are used, they are never fired.
I just find it hard to believe that most gun owners, you know, 99.99% of them if you believe your own numbers, are so cool in a clutch that they would merely play a game of chicken with a obviously dangerous criminal.
Simple put, if we have 2.5 million DGU's a year, we should have a lot more dead bodies.
Heck, even using the more generous NCVS figure of 65,000 DGU's a year, only 1 out of 325 crime victims uses lethal force. That's still a number that has 99.7% of gun users showing retraint.