An experiment I am going to perform regarding Defensive Gun Uses.

[GreenStormCloud]

First, I make no pretense that the experiment will be scientific, but I do think it will be interesting, and may shed some light on how common DGUs are.

I am going to start asking people whom I know if they have ever in their lives used a gun, even if it was just showing it, to defend their life, their families lives, health, or property. Combat uses in military service will be excluded. Police or former police will be asked if the incident occured while they were acting as a private citizen. Mostly I will ask older folks because they are the ones who have had enough years that they may have had a DGU.

I will not ask anyone whom I know to frequent bars and trouble spots. I will ask only those whom I know to be honest and whose answer I can trust.

While not scientific, the results should shed some light on the subject. If DGUs are so extremely rare as some here believe then I should find almost none. If I find a bunch of them then that would indicate that they are fairly common over a person's lifetime. By that I mean that an armed person could expect to have it happen about once or twice in their lifetimes.

I am open to suggestions that may help me improve the survey, but I will insist that I be able to make it informal.

It will take a few weeks for me to do the survey. I will post the results here.