Gun Control in the United States: What is the statistical break down on the use of weapons purchased for the purpose of self defense?

There are some scattered statistics mostly related to crimes and death, but nothing related to gun or weapon behavior.  This is largely because congress has refused to fund any research that is remotely related to gun-control.  These statistics could be obtained the same way we get information about behavior or attitudes: self reporting surveys.  It's how we learn about the behavior of criminals, the sexual attitudes of our friends and neighbors, and largely how we determine our census data.  Self reporting, in a large enough, and well vetted survey, can be thorough and accurate and reliable.

and other writers claim correctly that statistics for this answer are hard to come by.  But I can use some logic to shed light on this situation. We have records on how many guns and how much ammo are sold every year--pretty accurate.  And we have statistics on gunshot wounds from the medical profession.  When we compare those two numbers, we reach one inescapable conclusion: way more guns are sold every year than we have gunshot wounds and fatalities--put together. What may we conclude from this exploration? We must conclude that way more bullets are fired in recreation that are fired in self defense.

Actually, people AREN'T informed through anecdotes and narratives.  Such provide a misleading view of weapons use, because they never include #1, #2, and #4 on your list, which probably represent around 90% or more of guns purchased for self defense. They represent high profile cases, that are almost always exceptional.It's also interesting to me that you don't include "Owner used for intended purposes, resulting in the death or injury of an offender".You also reveal your own bias in your examples.  Your last case puts a generous, to say the least, light on a home invader in a room with a 12 year old girl.  Really?  You want this guy in your home with your daughter?Moving on, there is no real way to collect this information.  There is no recording of what people purchase guns for, and nobody is really doing any good research of exactly what they are doing with guns once they are purchased, and gun owners are notorious for not being willing to share that information with researches whom they often rightly assume are pushing for gun control.

The FBI's annual Crime Statistics Reports, though cumbersome, show that Americans use firearms to *prevent* crime at least 900,000 times a year, and that the number of firearms homicides is less than 10,000 per year.  This means that Americans *use* their guns for crime prevention rather than crime at a rate of 90 to 1.  There's no way to determine *for what purpose* any individual buys any particular gun, since gun-dealers aren't psychics.