It is undisputed that there are a great many legitimate "defensive gun uses" per year.
How many is of great dispute, getting into minutiae all the way down to survey question branching due to an unbridgeable cultural gap, but please don't deny even the lowest estimates of tens of thousands.
The numbers are on the side of gun owners and advocates. I'd be inclined to think that competing theories based on feelings would be more fantastical... even if the surveys are off by two orders of magnitude, the defensive uses outweigh mass shooting deaths.
How many is of great dispute, getting into minutiae all the way down to survey question branching due to an unbridgeable cultural gap, but please don't deny even the lowest estimates of tens of thousands.