Hicks, B. M. (2026). Lifetime prevalence of self-reported defensive gun use, offensive gun use, and nonfatal firearm victimization among Michigan adults. Injury Epidemiology. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40621-026-00725-x
Abstract
Background While guns have significant cultural importance in the United States, guns are also used in crimes and in self-defense and so many Americans will have experiences with guns that involve fear, property loss, or injury. To better inform firearm policy, we estimated the lifetime prevalence of self-reported offensive gun use (OGU), defensive gun use (DGU), and nonfatal firearm victimization (NFV) in the US state of Michigan.
Methods Two independent probability-based cross-sectional surveys were used to ascertain a pooled sample of adults living in the US state of Michigan (N=2489; 1264 female, 1225 male) with poststratification weighting to population benchmarks. Each domain of gun use and NFV were assessed using parallel items that ranged from telling someone you have a gun to shooting someone (or being shot by someone).
Results Lifetime prevalence rates were 3.7% (95% CI: 2.9% to 4.8%) for OGU, 8.8% (95% CI: 7.5% to 10.4%) for DGU, and 29.7% (95% CI: 27.5% to 31.9%) for NFV. About 80% of respondents only reported incidents that did not involve firing a gun. There was a high rate of co-occurrence between OGU and DGU (OR=70.1, 95% CI: 37.6 to 130.7), and between NFV and OGU (OR=7.4, 95% CI: 4.4 to 12.4) and DGU (OR=3.9, 95% CI: 2.7 to 5.7). Gun usage and/or NFV was higher among younger ages, men, Black and Hispanic respondents, gun owners,
respondents with prior military service or having a job that required carrying a firearm, lower income and education, and living in urban areas and more dangerous neighborhoods.
Conclusions The results suggest that negative firearm-involved encounters may be relatively common in Michigan (and potentially the US) and the need for public policy to minimize firearm related harms.
Keywords Defensive gun use · Offensive gun use · Nonfatal firearm victimization