I mean this with total respect- any statistic can be manipulated. Just hear me out for a second. For the next bit I'm ONLY talking about statistics, NOT arguing in favor of firearms.
Owning a firearm increases your risk of shooting others- OF COURSE it does. How are you supposed to shoot someone if you have no gun to shoot them with?
However what if the person you are shooting is a criminal trying to rape you or assault you? If you shoot the criminal, then yes you're helping the 'risk of shooting someone' statistic, but wouldn't you rather shoot the person than let the criminal rape or assault you? Therefore, this statistic is largely invalid.
A valid statistic would be the likelihood of ACCIDENTALLY shooting someone, weighed against the likelihood of using your firearm in self-defense. That's how you'd figure out if it's a net risk or a net benefit.
Owning a firearm increases your risk of getting shot- sure, if you include suicides. A suicidal person (who is serious, not a 'cry for help' type) will use whatever means are available to kill themselves. So yes if you include suicides you'll find more gunshots among gun owners. But at the same time, you'll find more drownings among people who have pools or live near water, and more death by high fall in big cities with tall buildings than in the middle of rural Kansas where there's nothing high to jump off. So again, this statistic is largely invalid.
A valid statistic would be the overall likelihood of accidentally shooting yourself, or the likelihood of having your gun taken away and used against you. If these things were commonplace, that would be a valid argument against private gun ownership.
Bottom line is there's some cherry picked stats on both sides of the argument. For whatever it's worth- while I'm pro-gun, that's not ingrained; I used to be mostly neutral but my opinions have evolved based on some extensive research. I try to always keep an open mind, I hope you do the same.
In case it's at all interesting, the stats I look at- take from this what you will, and if you have stats to refute these I would be VERY interested in seeing them. I'm typing this from memory but can dig up the (mostly neutral) sources for them if you want.
Each year in the USA, there are about 30,000 deaths due to car accidents. There are a bit fewer (around 28,000 as I recall) combined deaths due to gunshots, of which over half are suicides. You're left with around 11,000 (I think down below 10k in the most recent numbers) real firearm homicides per year. Of these homicides, under 500 (generally around 350) are committed with rifles (all rifles combined, including 'assault' rifles like AR-15).
On average, around 300 people per year die in 'mass shooting incidents'. To put that in perspective, around 330 people per year are struck by lightning. Point is- I do not worry about dying in a mass shooting and IMHO neither should you.
Now all this death must be weighed against the defensive uses of guns. A Defensive Gun Use (DGU) is when a law-abiding citizen uses a legally-owned firearm to stop or prevent a crime from occurring.
DGUs are difficult to measure. In the vast majority (95+%) of DGUs, no shots are fired- the criminal sees the gun and runs away. Thus many are not reported to police, and of those that are, there's no national system to track these. The result is that what numbers there are come from various research studies. As a result the numbers vary widely.
According to a fairly recent DoJ report, there are around 300,000 DGUs per year. According to an older Clinton-era DOJ report, there are 100,000 per year. That would make sense, as concealed carry has become far more common since the mid 90s. However if you go to various private studies the numbers go way up- the Kleck study suggested it's as common as 2.5 million DGU's / year.
You can take what you want from that, but my take away is that DGUs are more common than firearm homicides.
I admit that's an imperfect stat as it doesn't include firearm injuries- better would be DGUs vs total firearm injuries (not just deaths), because while a DGU may stop a crime it doesn't necessarily stop a homicide.
But that's where my opinions come from. I hope you found this somewhat interesting, and I hope you could read it with an open mind. My mind remains open- please feel free to refute anything I've said, I would love to read it...
