How Often are Firearms Used in Self Defense?
In 1993, Dr. Gary Kleck, a criminologist from Florida State University, found that there were approximately two million cases of defensive gun use within the U.S. every year. A year later, the Department of Justice sponsored their own survey titled, “Guns in America: National Survey on Private Ownership and Use of Firearms”. In that study (which used a smaller sample size that Dr. Kleck), they estimated an average of 1.5 million cases of defensive gun use each year.
Cato Institute—Guns and Self Defense map. Though this map is far from comprehensive (most instances of defensive gun use go unreported), it paints a picture of how widespread instances of defensive gun use are.