Many Defensive Gun Uses Demonstrate Life and Death Benefits of Supreme Court’s Bruen Decision.

Click The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database Here.

Amy Swearer | May 14, 2025
| (Athima Tongloom via Getty Images)
Amy Swearer @AmySwearer

Amy Swearer is a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies.
In a 2022 case called New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Supreme Court affirmed that ordinary Americans have a right to bear arms in public for self-defense, and struck down New York’s restrictive framework for issuing concealed carry permits. This framework, in effect, left most civilians in the state without any lawful way to exercise their Second Amendment self defense rights outside of the home.

Bruen immediately drew the ire of gun control activists, who decried the ruling as a threat to public safety. But now it’s clear that the only thing Bruen has done is give peaceable New Yorkers a better chance to protect themselves from violent criminals, without being treated as violent criminals themselves.

Consider a recent example out of Syracuse, New York. A grand jury determined that a concealed carry permit holder was justified in fatally shooting a knife-wielding man who lunged at him during a road rage incident.

Astonishingly, the local newspaper noted this was the first time in the area’s recent history that a person who used lethal force to defend himself or others wasn’t charged with a crime.

Why? Because, historically, the state’s incredibly restrictive gun laws meant the victim would nonetheless face charges for criminal possession of a weapon.
Fortunately, this legally armed New Yorker appears to be a beneficiary of Bruen’s demand that the state give ordinary residents at least some method of obtaining a concealed carry license. Rather than continue its attempts to undermine Bruen at every opportunity, New York should (as so many other states have) recognize that respect for the Second Amendment and self defense is, in fact, an important aspect of improving public safety

Many Defensive Gun Uses Demonstrate Life and Death Benefits Supreme Court’s Decision

Almost every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, a professor at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business conducted the most comprehensive study ever on the issue, and concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.

For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accounts from past months and years here.)

 

The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use during crimes that we found in April. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database.

• April 2, Albuquerque, New Mexico: In a Walmart parking lot, the driver of a Dodge Charger got into an altercation with a pickup truck driver, as well as that man’s dad and brother, who were following him in a smaller car. During the altercation, the brother of the man driving the Charger arrived, brandished a handgun, and shot at the pickup truck driver and his family members, who took cover behind their vehicles. The Charger driver got back into his car and drove at the men, striking the pickup driver and his dad, pinning them against another car. The pickup driver’s brother then fatally shot the driver of the Charger in defense of his pinned family members. Police arrested the Charger driver’s brother on charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and battery with a deadly weapon.

• April 4, Wichita, Kansas: Police say that a woman shot and wounded her boyfriend at a hotel in self-defense after he threatened her and hotel management with a knife. The man had allegedly also threatened the woman with a knife earlier in the night, inflicting minor injuries on her.

• April 8, Fredericksburg, Virginia: An illegal gun sale between a group of teenagers and young adults turned into a deadly armed robbery during which multiple gunmen sent dozens of rounds flying through a residential neighborhood, killing three people, wounding another three, and endangering the lives of countless more residents. Upon hearing the gunfire, one resident looked outside and saw one of the gunmen near his home. He then grabbed his own weapon for self defense and shot the armed suspect, injuring him, before retreating to safety.

• April 9, Kansas City, Missouri: A homeowner saw a suspicious man lurking around his two cars early in the morning and decided to get dressed and confront him. Unbeknownst to the homeowner, the man was in the middle of a crime spree and had already broken into 30 cars that night. After the homeowner came outside and caught the man breaking into yet another car, the man became aggressive and threatened to shoot the homeowner and a neighbor. The homeowner, however, was armed and shot the car thief three times in self defense , injuring him.

• April 13, Butts County, Georgia: A father used his self defense firearm to protect himself, his wife, and their three children from an intruder who broke into the home and threatened the family while yelling obscenities. The father fired a single shot at the man, which missed its target but caused the intruder to flee. Police later arrested the suspected intruder, who they say was already on probation for committing similar crimes.

• April 17, Crockett County, Tennessee: According to local authorities, a pregnant woman who fatally shot her husband “had no choice but to defend herself” and her two children during a violent assault in which the man attacked her with multiple weapons and attempted to strangle her. The local prosecutor told reporters the woman had survived years of domestic abuse and remarked that situations like this are “why people have guns.”

• April 19, Cincinnati, Ohio: A concealed carry permit holder was leaving a store after retrieving his wallet, which he had accidentally left there earlier in the night, when a masked man approached him, pointed a gun at him, and opened fire. Despite having been shot in the foot, the permit holder was able to return fire in self-defense, causing the gunman to flee.

• April 20, Belleville, Illinois: On Easter night, a man climbed through a window to illegally enter the apartment of a woman with whom he shared children. He assaulted the woman and then attempted to fight another man who was also inside the apartment, but the other man drew a self defense gun and fatally shot the assailant.

• April 22, Chino, California: A homeowner shot and wounded an intruder who had broken in through a window while he and his wife were home. By the time responding officers arrested the injured suspect—who was under the influence of drugs—he had taken off all his clothes and was naked. The local police chief “commended the homeowners for their strength and composure in a frightening situation” and offered them the department’s support in the aftermath of their traumatic experience.

• April 24, Cape Coral, Florida: A woman answered her door thinking her visiting family members had arrived, only to instead be greeted by a stranger who forced her back into the home at gunpoint and demanded that she lock the door behind her. The man may have been having a mental health crisis and was convinced that people “were after him.” The woman was initially able to de-escalate the situation by convincing the man to put the gun down and let her call 911. However, when the man reached for the weapon again, the woman’s husband, who was also home at the time, was forced to draw his own gun and detain the man at gunpoint until police arrived.

• April 27, Aurora, Colorado: A man tried to force his way into his estranged wife’s home in the middle of the night when someone inside the home shot and wounded him. Police say that the “details indicate [the shooting] was in self-defense,” and they don’t anticipate charges being filed against the self defense shooter.

As these examples clearly demonstrate, the ability to exercise one’s Second Amendment self defense rights—both in the home and in public—often makes all the difference in the world to victims of violent crime. Instead of seeking to undermine Bruen at every opportunity and return to a restrictive status quo where crime victims are punished for having the audacity to exercise their natural rights, states like New York should embrace the Bruen decision for bolstering public safety.

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