Much more frequently I can buy. But a thousand times as often? Where does that number come from, and doesn't Dean realize that (unless it is backed with solid statistics) a statement like that makes us look as bad as the lying liberals?
We know guns are used to stop crimes about 500,000 to 3 million times a year.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/cdc-study-use-firearms-self-defense-important-crime-deterrent
Our best estimates on justified homicides are about 750 to 1,500 a year.
That is where the 1-1,000 ratio comes from. The FBI reports about 250 justifiable homicides a year, but they underreport by a factor of 3-7.
http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2014/06/justified-homicide-in-califonia-not.html
The 1-1,000 ratio deserves a documented article of its own, which I am working on.
Actually, the ratio is probably even higher than that. The statistical studies vary all over the map, depending (typically) on the prejudices of the author. The best work is probably by Gary Kleck, who started out anti-self-defense, but switched his position based on his research. I believe his number was on the order of 6,000,000 defensive gun uses (DGU) per year.
Contrast that with Jens Ludwig (rabidly anti-gun), who started out to debunk Kleck's work, but whose own raw numbers showed defensive gun usages on the order of 20,000,000 DGU per year. He spent most of the rest of his report DEBUNKING HIS OWN DATA. Hilarious and sad simultaneously.