Liberty Evidence Engine

Evidence · 2026-09-11

Most defensive gun uses don't involve shots fired

William English's 2026 National Firearms Survey (Wave 2) asked 51,399 U.S. adults about defensive gun use. The public microdata show 6,673 lifetime DGUs among respondents who answered that question. English's published finding that most incidents did not involve firing the gun is the lead — reported here as his result. LEE cites that share. Large sample. Online survey (Centiment). The Kleck comparison lives on the instrument page.

Download data Methods

Data

label count share_of_answered_pct n_answered n_survey source
Once 2893 43.4 6673 51399 file_unweighted
Twice 2345 35.1 6673 51399 file_unweighted
Three times 920 13.8 6673 51399 file_unweighted
Four times 159 2.4 6673 51399 file_unweighted
Five or more times 356 5.3 6673 51399 file_unweighted

Methods & limits

Question. When a 2026 survey of 51k U.S. adults asks gun owners about defensive firearm use, what does the public microdata show for lifetime frequency — and what stays English's published result about shots fired?

  • This page reports William English, 2026 National Firearms Survey: Results from the Second Wave (SSRN working paper, posted August 24, 2026). Fielded July–August 2026. The public microdata file on Harvard Dataverse has 51,399 rows (paper: 51,398 adults; 16,688 internally validated gun owners).
  • Chart and CSV are unweighted counts from question Q15 in the Dataverse Qualtrics dump: how many times the respondent defended themselves, property, family, or a household member with a firearm. 6,673 respondents answered with at least one lifetime incident (once 2,893; twice 2,345; three 920; four 159; five or more 356). 44,725 rows are blank on Q15 (skip / not asked). This file has no survey weights. LEE reports the unweighted counts. National stock and the 2.2 million annual figure stay English's published numbers.
  • Lead finding, as cite: English reports that in most defensive incidents the gun was not fired (published share about 76%). That is his weighted incident result. v1 cites that share. The fire / show / neither follow-ups stay in the skip-path blocks. Same rule as the annualized 2.2 million figure: labeled as English's published number. LEE cites it.
  • Instrument: online survey (Centiment). Lifetime recall. A one-year victimization series is NCVS. Compare instruments on Why defensive-gun-use estimates disagree.
  • Downloadable CSV is the unweighted Q15 distribution above. Re-run from the Dataverse .tab if you want to check the counts. Urban homicide concentration remains the Lee demo page; this is a survey report sitting beside it.
Limitations. No weights in the public tab, so this page reports the unweighted counts. National stock and annual DGU totals stay English's published figures. Q15 is lifetime frequency. Incidents per year are a different cut. Fire / show / neither follow-ups are skip-pathed across multiple Qualtrics blocks; v1 leaves English's ~76% not-fired share as a cite. Survey self-report: telescoping, social desirability, and rare-event false positives are real and left open here. This page reports the survey. Carry-law questions live elsewhere. NCVS microdata is the other instrument.

Sources.