Even though the WSJ piece comes from its supposedly viewpoint neutral news division, it's clear from the get-go that reporters Mark Maremont and Tawnell D. Hobbs are pretty skeptical about the idea of self-defense insurance. They start with the recounting of an incident involving a Florida gun owner who shot an intruder on his property, but was advised by his USCCA attorney to take a guilty plea to a lesser charge rather than fight for his innocence in court. The armed citizen ultimately went with another lawyer and saw the charges dismissed, and dropped his USCCA membership after it expired (even though the company paid for his second attorney as well). 

But amidst the breathless reporting about private jets and vast amount of money earned by the founders of USCCA and U.S. Law Shield, Maremont and Hobbs also documented some interesting details about just how frequently customers are using their policies. 

Houston-based U.S. Law Shield, an industry pioneer that started in Texas in 2009 and now operates in 46 states, says it has about 600,000 to 700,000 members paying $10.95 to $54.90 a month, plus another 300,000 to 400,000 spouses and minor children added to plans by members. 

The company doesn’t disclose its financials, but insurance filings for two of its entities that operate in Florida and Virginia show they spent about 15% of revenue on legal expenses to cover member claims in recent years. 

Medical and professional-liability insurers, by contrast, generally spend about 60% to 75% of their premium revenue on direct claims losses, according to ratings firm AM Best.

“The number of people who ended up with charges is minuscule. That’s why they made so much money,” said Stanley Marks, a now-retired Denver attorney who was under contract to represent U.S. Law Shield members from 2013 to 2020.

Kirk Evans, president of U.S. Law Shield, said the cost of defending members in some states exceeds revenues, and when including other expenses such as member training and education the company’s loss ratio is in line with many insurers’. Even so, he said, “we’re very profitable.”

Evans said the company’s lawyers spend time and money representing members who shot somebody but don’t get indicted. About 30 to 35 members a month end up with criminal charges, he said, including incidents where a member is charged with threatening someone with a weapon. The “vast majority” of cases end in dismissals or acquittals, he said, with fewer than 10% taking plea deals.

Now, it'd be nice to know roughly how many members contact U.S. Law Shield after a DGU but don't ever face criminal charges for their actions, but even with the numbers offered by Evans its pretty clear that defensive gun uses aren't exactly uncommon. A conservative estimate of Evans's numbers would indicate a DGU rate of at least 48 per 100,000 gun owners every year, but that's only including those cases where criminal charges were filed. Considering that most defensive gun uses don't result in a trigger being pulled (and in many cases take place without police ever being informed), it's fair to say that the number of DGU's is much higher than that conservative estimate. 

Surveys of DGU have come up with wildly different results; about 100,000 DGUs annually on the low end to more than 3 million on the upper end of the spectrum. We may never know exactly how many times a gun is used in self-defense over the course of a year, but based solely on the figures reported by Evans it sure looks like the number of DGUs is indeed far greater than the number of gun-related homicides and non-fatal shootings in the United States.