[dmix]

Not only incidents where they were successful in self-defence but the perception of the potential victim being armed is also highly relevant.

How much crime is deterred from happening in the first place, for example in states where its well-known that gun ownership is popular, is often difficult to track accurately. But there's a ton of statistics that show correlation in crime reduction.

[clarky07]

Exactly. Compare gun crime in DC, which has tons of gun control, to lots of other places without gun control.

[dmix]

Indeed, new numbers come out all the time. This ones from 2011, from two states with some of the worst gun crime:

> Murder and violent crime rates were supposed to soar after the Supreme Court struck down gun control laws in Chicago and Washington, D.C. But Armageddon never happened. Newly released data for Chicago shows that, as in Washington, murder and gun crime rates didn’t rise after the bans were eliminated — they plummeted. They have fallen much more than the national crime rate.

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2011/10/05/crime-rates-in...