Americans who look only at the daily headlines would be surprised to learn that, according to academic estimates, defensive gun uses — including instances when guns are simply shown to deter a crime — are four to five times more common than gun crimes, and far more frequent than the roughly 20,000 murders or fewer each year, with or without a gun.

He points to a grouping of 17 surveys that find "between 760,000 defensive handgun uses and 3.6 million defensive uses of any type of gun per year, with an average of about 2 million."

Lott indicated that most people have no idea there are so many defensive gun uses because such uses are not widely reported on the establishment media. Instead, the establishment media appears to focus on gun crimes.