New Survey Estimates 180,000 Defensive Gun Uses Against Animals Each Year

Man being attacked by four pit bull dogs

Video in public domain from wikimedia.org 

William English has published a new, comprehensive, detailed survey on firearms ownership and defensive firearms use in the United States. This new academic paper is 75 pages long. It details the care with which the survey was accomplished. In this new survey, questions were included about using firearms in defense against animals. The survey shows 8.4% of defensive firearms use were directed against animals.

Several examples of verbatim responses about defensive firearms use directed against animals are included in Appendix H. These were specifically taken from responses where the respondents were asked:

 “Have you ever been in a situation (including any referenced in earlier responses) in which it would have been useful for defensive purposes to have a firearm with a magazine capacity in excess of 10 rounds? If so, please briefly describe that situation.”

There were 2,386 individuals who answered positively. most of those are reported as giving a description of the situation. The paper quotes 33 responses to illustrate what was reported to them. Of the 33 responses, 7 involved defenses against animals, somewhat higher than mentioned in the overall survey.  Here are a three from the paper:

• Going hunting a cougar came up on me and I fired 15 shots for it to go away

• When a dog with rabies was attacking my livestock and would not go down even after several shots and reloading

• We had an aggressive bear come onto our property and was going after animals. had a Glock 9mm had to use 2 clips

As a researcher and writer who has devoted considerable time to detailing the usefulness of handguns in defense against bears, it was gratifying to see William English include animal defenses as a significant, if not large, portion of the defensive use of firearms. One of the more common defense against animals which this correspondent has observed in media reports is defense against aggressive and often feral dogs. This correspondent has had several close calls with aggressive dogs. On one occasion, a Glock 17 was drawn, but fortunately, was not required to be fired.

Dogs are much more aggressive when acting as a pack.  Attacking animals tend to be very sensitive to how confident the potential “prey” acts. The availability of a firearm increases the confidence of the person who has it, thus decreasing the chances of attack.  The more confident the person with the firearm is in their ability to use it, the less likely they will have to use it.

At the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy asked counsel if the right to keep and bear arms:

 “had nothing to do with the concern of the remote settler to defend
himself and his family against hostile Indian tribes and outlaws, wolves
and bears and grizzlies and things like that?”

The survey by William English definitively shows defense against animal attack is not a dead letter. The estimate of 2.2 million defensive uses of firearms per year. This is a conservative number in the survey. 8.4% of those would be about 180 thousand defensive uses against animals in the United States every year. Criminal uses of firearms where the person was victimizes were about 1.8 per thousand since 2008. Defensive use of firearms against animals are about .54 per thousand, or nearly a third as many. Defensive uses of firearms in total are about 6.4 per thousand or 3.5 times as many as successful victimizations.

The stories which reach the headlines are when people are injured or killed.  Bear attacks where people are injured make headlines.  Attacks by rabid skunks, coyotes, foxes or bobcats in rural areas may make local news. The common successful defenses, when no person has been injured, seldom make the news.

Analysis: Cartridge firearms make humans the top level predator on the planet. Nothing else comes close. When animals prey on humans where cartridge firearms are common, the animals are quickly killed. The defensive use of firearms against attacking animals is not controversial. Many people in urban centers are unaware such defenses occur on a regular basis. The well designed and executed survey done by William English goes a long way to provide information to those ignorant of the phenomena.

©2026 by Dean Weingarten: Permission to share is granted when this notice and link are included.

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