Actually, it was Kleck 2001a who made that claim. The NRC just quoted and referenced him/her and said that it warranted more study.US gun death numbers in recent years have been in the 30-35,000 ballpark, with about 1/3 homicides, 2/3 suicides, and those numbers are commonly available from many sources.
The lowest estimate, frequently touted by anti-gunners is the David Hemenway figure - 55,000–80,000 of defensive gun uses on an annual basis, even though most anti-gunners usually push the 100,000 ballpark, based on the NCVS. The highest number was the Chiltons study that indicated 4,700,000 annual defensive gun uses. Those are the two extreme ends of the spectrum. Most pro-gunners push the Kleck and Gertz study that claims about 750,000 defensive gun uses and claims that for every reported gun use, there were 1-3 unreported defensive gun uses. The Lott study indicated that in over 90% of defensive gun uses, either brandishing or just firing a warning shot were enough to achieve the defensive goal. The Lott study is also used to connect the anti-gun community figure of 100,000 (as those studies typically looked at the cases where the attacker was injured or killed, while ignoring the rest) and the pro-gun community figure of over 1,000,000 defensive gun uses.
One additional tidbit of info was that people who used firearms to defend themselves from a violent attack had much lower injury and death rates than people who used other defensive strategies, as per the Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence report by the National Research Council.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/06/28/controversial-pro-gun-researcher-helped-write-f/194660
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