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11 Defensive Gun Uses Show How Lawful Gun Owners ‘Get It Right’

Six minutes after a pawn shop opened in Glendale, Colorado, an armed robber entered and pointed a gun at employees, police say. Another employee retrieved a firearm, approached the robber from behind, and fatally shot him. (Photo illustration: D-Keine/Getty Images)

Often lost in conversations about gun violence is the reality of who is responsible for the bulk of that violence. Most gun crimes aren’t committed by lawful gun owners but by a small subset of repeat violent offenders who already are prohibited from legally possessing firearms.

At the same time, the vast majority of the nation’s millions of lawful gun owners will never use their firearms to harm themselves or others (excluding, of course, actions taken in lawful self-defense).

Nevertheless, sometimes people make questionable—or even downright abhorrent—decisions with their lawfully owned firearms. This was quite apparent in recent weeks as several gun owners made national headlines for all the wrong reasons, recklessly resorting to the use of lethal force when it likely wasn’t warranted.  

Although these individuals rightly should have their actions scrutinized, the reality is that Americans with legally possessed guns are far more likely to “get it right” than they are to “get it wrong.”

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has acknowledged. In 2021, the most comprehensive study ever conducted on the issue concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read other accounts here from past months and years. You also may follow @DailyDGU on Twitter for daily highlights of recent defensive gun uses.)

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use that we found in April. You may explore more using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)

Defending the Second Amendment doesn’t mean we have to defend every action by every gun owner. Those who choose to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms should strive to be proficient with their guns, but also level-headed and judicious about when they resort to the use of lethal force.

Sometimes, gun owners get it wrong. When they do, they should be charged and prosecuted, and, if convicted, face appropriate consequences.

But on the aggregate, a well-armed civilian population does far more to benefit public safety than to undermine it. And, as these defensive gun uses in April help demonstrate, when lawful gun owners do have to rely on their right to keep and bear arms, it often can mean the difference between life and death or serious injury.

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