New Everytown Report Finds Defensive Gun Use is Rare and Ineffective, Debunking Gun Lobby Myth

Everytown’s New Analysis Shows Defensive Gun Use Occurs in Fewer Than 1% of All Personal and Property Crime in the United States – 96% Less Often than the Gun Lobby Claims

NEW YORK – Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund today released a new report which found that not only is defensive gun use (DGU) exceedingly rare, it’s also deeply ineffective. Everytown’s analysis found fewer than 1 percent of all personal and property crimes involve a gun used in self-defense – about 69,000 incidents total, compared to the 1.67 million the gun lobby claims occur every year. Put differently, fewer than 1 in 25 of the DGU incidents claimed by the gun lobby per year actually occur.

According to today’s report, in the rare instance that guns are brandished or fired in self-defense, they often don’t help – and can make things worse. People who use a gun for defense during a crime are 2.5 times less likely to escape and 10 percent less likely to avoid injury than those who don’t use one. 

“The evidence is clear: using a gun for self-defense is rare, ineffective, and far less common than the gun lobby leads Americans to believe,” said Nick Suplina, SVP of Law and Policy at Everytown for Gun Safety. “For decades, the gun lobby has built its business on selling fear – convincing Americans through deceptive marketing that owning a gun is the only way to stay safe. But that could not be farther from the truth: guns are more likely to cause harm than to prevent it, and this profit-driven misinformation campaign continues to put American families at risk.”

Key findings from the report include:

• With most gun owners citing protection as their reason to own a firearm, it’s important to put the risks into perspective: Homicides, assaults, and home invasions are all down in the United States, having fallen significantly since pandemic highs. 
  • Attacks from armed strangers are extremely rare. In 94 percent of annual personal or property crime incidents, the suspect was not armed with a gun.  
  • This disconnect between perceived and actual risk is driven by relentless marketing from a gun lobby that sells fear to maximize profit.

• In response to crime, victims rarely use a gun for defense, either in their homes or outside: defensive gun use occurs in fewer than 1 percent of all personal and property crimes. 

• While rare, in a high proportion of these cases, using a gun not only doesn’t protect people and property, but also causes harm and sometimes fatalities.
  • Crime victims who respond with a gun are 2.5 times less likely to get away from the offender than those who respond without one and 10 percent less likely to avoid injury.
  • Nearly 13 percent of those who used their gun defensively in a crime lose property, more than those who defend themselves in other ways.

In contrast to the NRA’s claim that gun laws make us less safe, a separate Everytown analysis of 50 gun safety laws across the 50 states finds that states with the weakest gun safety laws have a gun death rate two and a half times higher than states that are national gun safety leaders. And in particular, research shows that more guns in public spaces lead to violent crimes: states that have weakened their firearm permitting system have experienced a 13 to 15 percent increase in violent crime rates.

The report also outlines the broader risks that come with keeping a gun in one’s home, particularly when that gun is not securely stored, including injury and death from unintentional shootings, school shootings, suicides, and intimate partner homicides. Nearly every day in the United States, a child under 18 finds a loaded gun and unintentionally shoots themself or someone else, often a sibling or friend over for a playdate. And nearly 80 percent of firearm suicides by children 17 or younger involve a gun owned by a family member. Firearms are also transferred outside of the home: In three out of four of the shootings plaguing our schools, the firearms came from the home of a parent or close relative.