From The Federalist:

Studies on incidents of defensive gun use range anywhere from an absurdly low 55,000 to a high of 4.7 million per year. The most commonly cited and widely accepted is the 1995 study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, which estimates that between 2.1 and 2.5 million defensive gun use instances occur in the United States each year.

By contrast, from 1993-2011, nonfatal firearm-related crime ranged between 1,287,190 and 331,618 incidents per year. This data makes a strong case that defensive gun use is much more common than firearm-related crime. Instances of defensive gun use save lives every day, but the stories get very little news coverage, while the statistically much fewer negative gun uses are often covered by the national news media for days on end.