The Heritage Foundation has introduced the Defensive Gun Use Database, described as “an interactive map featuring news accounts from police reports.”
According to the Daily Signal, which has been publishing a monthly series on the defensive use of firearms by legally-armed private citizens for more than a year, the new Database includes reports that could not fit into the monthly installments. Typically, the Daily Signal runs about a dozen stories per month.
The database marks the locations of shootings, and by clicking a dot on a map, the user can access information about each incident of defensive gun use (DGU).
While the database is reportedly not meant to be a comprehensive list of all such incidents in the United States, according to the Daily Signal, there will be plenty of information available. The Daily Signal describes this database as “an incredibly important tool because these confirmed cases help prove that the ‘good guy with a gun’ is not a myth.”
“As the database proves, every single day lawful gun owners use their firearms to defend themselves and others against criminals when the government simply could not get there in time,” writes Amy Swearer, senior legal policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. “These gun owners are not vigilantes who went looking for trouble. They did not intentionally place themselves in dangerous situations. Many of them even fail to fit the caricature of ‘typical gun owner.’”
TGM visited the Database website and found a map of the United States with dates of each incident, and information with a single click on each blue dot. There is a link to news coverage of the event highlighted.
As Swearer’s narrative notes, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost all major studies on defensive gun use have found that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year. Researchers have good reason to believe, however, that most defensive gun uses aren’t reported to law enforcement, much less picked up by local or national media.”
