I linked to this study (also from Harvard) elsewhere in this thread.

Yes, I saw your points on the other issue in this thread.

They didn't touch on this issue at that time.

I looked at the 46 page pdf and did a search on the word "defensive" to see where you got your argument from. The first search find was this:

83. This Article will not discuss the defensive use of firearms beyond making the

following observations: while there is a great deal of controversy about the subject,

it is a misleading controversy in which anti‐gun advocatesʹ deep ethical or moral

objections to civilian self‐defense are presented in the guise of empirical argument.

The empirical evidence unquestionably establishes that gun ownership by prospective

victims not only allows them to resist criminal attack, but also deters violent

criminals from attacking them in the first place.

From the same note:

The legitimate question is not whether victim gun possession allows for selfdefense

and deters criminal violence, but how extensive and important these benefits

are.

That's the question posed here in this piece of the thread. The paper you linked did not directly answer the question except to pose the same question in the notes.

Back to your quote.

Recent analysis reveals “a great deal of self‐defensive use of firearms” in the United States, “in fact, more defensive gun uses [by victims] than crimes committed with firearms."

I'm interested in where this statistic came from, (it's in the footnote 87) which states that it's a collection of studies. Note 89 states:

These studies are highly controversial. See Kates, supra note 29, at 70–71, for discussion

of critics and criticisms.

Your quote is slightly out of context and not consistent with the notes and the broader theme of the paper.

As to your point about comparing other countries' relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates, the author of the article you linked notes in summary:

Moreover, if the deterrent effect of gun ownership accounts for

low violence rates in high gun ownership nations other than the

United States, one wonders why that deterrent effect would be

amplified there. Even with the drop in United States murder rates

that Lott and Mustard attribute to the massive increase in gun

carry licensing, the United States murder rate is still eight times

higher than Norway’s—even though the U.S. has an almost 300%

higher rate of gun ownership. That is consistent with the points

made above. Murder rates are determined by socio‐economic and

cultural factors. In the United States, those factors include that the

number of civilian‐owned guns nearly equals the population—

triple the ownership rate in even the highest European gunownership

nations—and that vast numbers of guns are kept for

personal defense. That is not a factor in other nations with comparatively

high firearm ownership. High gun ownership may

well be a factor in the recent drastic decline in American homicide.

But even so, American homicide is driven by socio‐economic

and cultural factors that keep it far higher than the comparable

rate of homicide in most European nations.

In sum, though many nations with widespread gun ownership

have much lower murder rates than nations that severely restrict

gun ownership, it would be simplistic to assume that at all times

and in all places widespread gun ownership depresses violence by

deterring many criminals into nonconfrontation crime. There is

evidence that it does so in the United States, where defensive gun

ownership is a substantial socio‐cultural phenomenon. But the

more plausible explanation for many nations having widespread

gun ownership with low violence is that these nations never had

high murder and violence rates and so never had occasion to enact

severe anti‐gun laws.

my bolding added

The author of the article you linked is clear to point out that the relationship of one country's gun policies and the link to its homicide rate may not translate to another country rates due to socio-economic factors and its cultural history. That's a point you neglected to mention.

The author notes that it may be impossible to find the relationship between gun ownership and homicide rates because of the complexity of socio-economic factors and the cultural reasons for gun ownership.

Of course, all other things may not be equal. Obviously,

many factors other than guns may promote or reduce the

number of murders in any given place or time or among particular

groups. And it may be impossible even to identify

these factors, much less to take account of them all. Thus any

conclusions drawn from the kinds of evidence presented earlier

in this paper must necessarily be tentative.

The author then goes on to discuss the burden of proof and where it lies. The author asserts that the burden lies with those who want gun control. If there's no proof on either side, what's the reason that the burden of proof should lie on the side of the people who want gun control?