Gun Violence Archive

As of today, May 31, 2025, the Gun Violence Archive reports 5,963
gun-related deaths in the United States for the year 2025. This
includes homicides, unintentional shootings, and DGW (death by gunshot
wound) in general.  These are all based on findings by (at least) a
medical examiner who is a sworn "finder of fact".  IOW, the finding
holds unless compelling contradictory evidence is introduced and
documented.

As of today, May 31, 2025, there have been zero documented defensive
gun uses in the United States for the year 2025.  You might notice
that I avoid the acronym "DGU", popularized by Dr Kleck's '90s surveys
where the researcher defines a "DGU" as an answer to an anonymous
telephone survey... if it's your survey, you may define it any way you
wish.  To be a "defensive gun use", the incident must be tested by the
scientific method resulting in a finding by a "finder of fact", such
as a judge, medical examiner... a police report that entered a
specific finding stating that it was, in fact, an act of self defense
would work if the finding were explicit.

News media reports don't count for either.

Given the massive number of DGW in the US, one can apply the "space
alien argument" that goes: "If there are 100K UFO sightings, only
*one* has to be a real spaceship full of extraterrestrial space aliens
for them to exist... and there's likely one valid defensive gun use,
but we can't put a probability on it.