Yeah it ' s my first ever post didn ' t even know the format . Although not a comp part , with all these people with new monitors never know ahah . <| sep |> Well , it ' s definitely not an easily searchable question . I need some help with a unique situation . <| sep |> The discrepancy in numbers is so high that we can ' t draw any firm conclusions about this . I disagree . Even the lowest estimates of DGU ' s ~ 50 , 000 outnumber the number of people killed via gun homicide in this country ~ 12 , 000 . So even if 25 % of DGU ' s save a life , the number of lives saved outnumber lives lost . The United States compares very unfavorably to every country in Western Europe and Japan where they have strict gun control laws when it comes to violent crime rates . You are comparing countries with wildly different cultures with one another . Not to mention that the countries you mention have hundreds of year of gun control in their past . Even if we started banning the sale of guns today , we would still have more than one gun per person in the US . You are also failing to mention Japan ' s suicide rate , which is much higher than the U . S . ' s while most gun deaths in the U . S . are suicides . I agree , but it just begs the question to say that this should be an inherently lawful form of defense . Of course it should . Should people let themselves be beaten , raped , robbed or killed ? Of course not . Selfdefense is the right of every man , woman and child on this planet . And won ' t a lot of people also foreseeable use this defense unreasonably and inflict grave harm on an innocent victim by using a gun on them ? Of course they will , but it is comparatively rare when contrasted with actual violent crime . This may be a pragmatic problem with gun prohibition , but it doesn ' t speak to the point about weighing the foreseeable costs of gun control against its foreseeable benefits , and which weighs more heavily . Again , I find the costs of gun control to weigh more heavily on our society and our individual liberties than the largely culturallyrelated gun violence in our country . I am all for taking steps to reduce gun violence in our country , but the simple fact is I value freedom more than safety . We live in a uniquely free society , thanks to our Bill of Rights . If we repealed the 1 st , 2 nd , 4 th , and 5 th Amendments , our society would probably be safer . But that doesn ' t mean it ' s the right thing to do .