[manicdee]

This argument in support of "lives saved by guns" is not a classic case of Bastiat's "that which is not seen". This is a classic case of intellectual onanism.

There is a high statistical correlation between gun ownership as a percentage of population and gun deaths as a percentage of population. Unknowable figures such as "lives saved by firearms" are already taken into account. Regardless of how many lives have been saved by potential criminals not committing a crime due to fear of consequences, there were far more deaths actually caused by firearms.

This is why the number of deaths got larger: there were more people dead from firearms than people still alive from firearms.