"The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals."

[lucy]

Does anyone of you happen to know how many criminals are shot by law abiding citizens in the states versus how many law abiding citizens get shot by accident (or out of sheer dumbness) by just another law abiding, tho unlucky (or just plain stupid), citizen?

[Ragoczy]

Does anyone of you happen to know how many criminals are shot by law abiding citizens in the states versus how many law abiding citizens get shot by accident (or out of sheer dumbness) by just another law abiding, tho unlucky (or just plain stupid), citizen?

I don't have a recent, legitimate study. I do know that the frequent "you're x-times more likely to be killed by your own gun than to kill a criminal" stats are cooked. I have yet to see one of those studies where they're actually comparing home- or self-defense. They study only deaths, leaving off the fact that most home-/self-defense incidents don't result in death or injury to the criminal -- the person defending themselves isn't typically looking to fire the gun, only to keep themselves from being hurt, so the criminal retreats unscathed.

When Florida instituted its carry-permit law, the Dade County Sheriff started a program to track criminal incidents and accidents involving people with permits. Seven (I think) years later they closed the program because it had less than ten entries.