Lord Larehip

Try out this stat:

The following is from a pro-gun website:

Regardless of which counts of homicides by police are used, the results indicate that civilians legally kill far more felons than police officers do. The figures imply that, of 24,614 civilian (not by police) homicide deaths in the United States in 1990, about 1400 to 3200, or 5.6% to 13.0% were legal civilian defensive homicides.
http://www.pulpless.com/gunclock/kleck2.html

There are no stats I can find related to numbers of intruders killed in the home but if we use the above stat from any and all justifiable homicides of 1400-3200 a year, take a mean average of 2300, and spread that over five years, it means that there about 11,000 justifiable homicides in five years. That means accidental deaths in the home over a five year period (3800) is a whopping 33% of ALL the justifiable homicides that occurred in that same period! Now remember that "justifiable" includes very questionable shootings like the Trayvon Martin case but even if Martin deserved to be killed, he wasn't an intruder breaking into a home. In fact, if the majority of justifiable homicides were the killings of intruders, I wouldn't be having such a hard time finding a statistic for it. The fact that it doesn't appear that this stat exists indicates how little it happens.

Further, the fact that legal civilian defensive homicides only account for 5.6%-13% of all the non-police homicides in a single year, shows that number of justifiable homicide gun deaths is exceedingly small--the rest is murder, suicide and accidents. Remove 3200 pennies from a pile of 24,600 and see how much of a difference it makes.

Owning a gun at home substantially increase the risk of death by firearm to everyone in the home. It turns out that suicide is the leading cause of death for Americans who have purchased a handgun within the previous year. (data published in the New England Journal of Medicine – Wintermute GJ. NEJM. 2008; 358:1421-4). Like cigarette smoke, owning a firearm has deleterious effects on everyone in the home, not just on the one who purchased the gun. Writing in the peer-reviewed journal Annals of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Wiebe reported on a case-controlled study in which household were matched on a number of demographic factors, and then incidences of gun violence were compared. They found that people who keep a gun in their home are almost twice as likely to die in a gun-related homicide, and that the risk was especially greater for women: women living in a home where there is a gun are almost three times more likely to die in a gun-related homicide than men similarly situated. The risk of killing oneself using a gun was almost 17 times greater for persons who live in a home where there is a gun, compared to those in homes without guns. (Wiebe D. Annals of Emergency Medicine. 2003; 41:771-82).

Gun enthusiasts like to claim that keeping a gun handy protects them and their family from violent intruders. The study by Wiebe shows that having a gun at home is associated with an increased risk of dying by gunfire, so gun ownership does not appear to be protective of violent firearms-related killings. But the Wiebe study was also able to compute the likelihood of dying by violence other than gunfire. They found there was no relationship between owning a gun and homicide by means other than a gun. In other words, having a gun around is not associated with a decreased risk of homicide of any sort. The study could find no empiric evidence that owning a gun confers some protection on a household from homicide. To my knowledge, there is no peer-reviewed study published anywhere that provides evidence that guns or gun ownership protects individuals from death or injury. If anyone reading this knows of such a study, I hope they will tell me so I can go read that study.

Daily Kos: Statistics, Guns, and Wishful Thinking

Unintentional Deaths and Injuries
In 2010, unintentional firearm injuries caused the deaths of 606 people.18
From 2005-2010, almost 3,800 people in the U.S. died from unintentional shootings.
Over 1,300 victims of unintentional shootings for the period 2005–2010 were under 25 years of age.
People of all age groups are significantly more likely to die from unintentional firearm injuries when they live in states with more guns, relative to states with fewer guns. On average, states with the highest gun levels had nine times the rate of unintentional firearms deaths compared to states with the lowest gun levels.
A federal government study of unintentional shootings found that 8% of such shooting deaths resulted from shots fired by children under the age of six.
The U.S. General Accounting Office has estimated that 31% of unintentional deaths caused by firearms might be prevented by the addition of two devices: a child-proof safety lock (8%) and a loading indicator (23%).

Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence