Law-abiding citizens use guns to defend themselves against criminals as many as 2.5 million times every year, or about 6,850 times a day. This means that each year, firearms are used more than 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives. Of the 2.5 million self-defense cases, as many as 200,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse. The error rate' for the police, however, was 11 percent, more than five times as high. Of the 2.5 million times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, the overwhelming majority merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers.
Handguns are the weapon of choice for self-defense.
Citizens use handguns to protect themselves over 1.9 million times a year. Police cannot protect and are not required to protect every individual. The courts have consistently ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect individuals, only the public in general. Former Florida Attorney General Jim Smith told Florida legislators that police responded to only about 200,000 of 700,000 calls for help to Dade County authorities. The Department of Justice found that in 1989, there were 168,881 crimes of violence which were not responded to by police within 1 hour.