Anecdotes from daily newspapers leave no doubt that defensive gun use occurs. Less than a year later, he was strangled by a burglar. A neighbor said that if he had had the gun he would not have been killed. In most cases of defensive use, criminals run away when their victims have a gun. No shots are fired, no crime is committed, and police may not be notified.
Police are even less likely to be involved in the many high crime areas where guns are illegal.
She reported the incident to the police. They charged her with a felony for carrying a concealed weapon. The muggers ran off because criminals, like everyone else, prefer to make their living without getting shot. In 1995, Gary Kleck and Mark Gertz published the results of the first anonymous population survey specifically designed to measure the incidence of defensive gun use against humans in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. The survey queried a large, randomly selected, sample of people about defensive gun use.