In the 11 days tracked by ABC News, there were 49 shooting incidents involving what the Gun Violence Archive calls “defensive use” of firearms.For example, in East Ridge, Tennessee, a 54-year-old man went into the store at a gas station and demanded money, before grabbing a female clerk and taking her hostage. As the suspect dragged the clerk out of the store, a customer spotted them, got a handgun out of his vehicle and fired several shots, hitting the suspect in the torso, according to NewsChannel9 in Chattanooga.Similarly, in Spokane Valley, Washington, a man allegedly tried to rob a bank at gunpoint – but a customer inside the credit union was armed and fired at the suspect.“At this point the belief is the suspect was possibly hit in the arm and fled the bank on foot,” Spokane County Sheriff Deputy Mark Gregory told ABC affiliate KXLY-TV in Spokane after the incident.“It’s a good thing he had a gun,” a Spokane Valley resident who lives near the bank said of the armed customer. “He [might] have prevented somebody really getting hurt. ... It was a damn good thing.”In total, “defensive use” accounted for less than 5 percent of the 1,125 shooting incidents identified by the Gun Violence Archive in those 11 days.In many cases, gun violence is unintended, but with the same deadly consequences.During one of the days we tracked, at least two children under 10 years old were shot in accidental gun incidents.On the morning of June 25, a 5-year-old boy shot and killed his 4-year-old brother, Christopher Lassiter, in East Orange, N.J.Authorities have said the gun belonged to their mother, Itiyanah Spruill, 22, but it was still unclear how the 5-year-old got ahold of the gun, reported ABC7 in New York. The boy’s’ mother broke down crying in court while her attorney requested permission to attend her son’s funeral.She pleaded not guilty last week to weapons and child endangerment charges.The same day in Cleveland, Ohio, an 8-year-old boy was injured while attempting to reload a handgun. The young boy and his friends found the gun, a Cobra FS .38-caliber semi-automatic handgun, in their uncle’s car, a 2004 Cadillac Seville. They took three bullets out of the gun, but didn’t know how to put them back, so they looked for a YouTube video, according to police reports. The boy shot himself in the arm.The boy was transported to the hospital and was in stable condition, reported ABC5 in Cleveland. During the 11 days, the Gun Violence Archive tracked 16 accidental firearm deaths.“Securely storing firearms when not in use is the No. 1 way to help prevent firearms accidents, thefts and misuse,” said Bill Brassard Jr., senior director of communications for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which manages Project ChildSafe , a gun safety program throughout the U.S.There is a secure storage device for every individual’s home circumstances, ranging from a gun lock, lock boxes, quick-access gun safes to full-size gun safes, according to Brassard.Project ChildSafe also provides gun locks to local law enforcement to give to gun owners at no cost.Project ChildSafe teamed up with the Detroit Police Department to teach gun safety -- programs that they carry out throughout the country.“There is no excuse for not securely storing firearms to keep them away from children and other unauthorized persons,” said Brassard.Suicides by gun are one of the most difficult types of gun violence to track in real time, as U.S. media organizations generally don’t cover self-inflicted gun deaths, and privacy laws prevent reporting on a lot of the cases.However, data show that suicide deaths have been on the rise over the past decade. Ninety percent of people who die by suicide have a mental disorder at the time of their deaths, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP).Suicide deaths by firearm are nearly double that of homicide deaths by firearm, according to CDC data.And about half of all suicides in the U.S. were committed with a firearm in 2014, according to data analyzed by AFSP.The Gun Violence Archive cataloged 335 suicide deaths by firearm so far this year.Cathy Barber, director of the Means Matter Project at the Harvard School of Public Health, believes that partnering with gun owners and gun stores is one of the “easy ways” to help reduce suicide. The Means Matter Project works to find ways of reducing a suicidal person’s access to highly lethal means. Most people who survive suicide attempts do not try again, so limiting access to lethal means can save lives, according to Barber.In her work, Barber found that the values of gun owners -- promoting responsibility and preventing accidents and protecting the family -- are very consistent with the values of preventing suicide.“This isn’t about slamming guns, this is about figuring out a solution that is going to protect gun owners and their families,” she said.There is a timing issue when it comes to suicide risk. The risk of an individual is highly dynamic, it changes over time. The impulse to carry out an act of suicide may only be there for a few minutes in some cases, according to suicide prevention advocates and medical experts who study the issue.Barber suggests getting “creative” to reduce the risk that people will use a firearm to kill themselves, and that could mean leaving your guns with a friend, putting them in a storage unit or changing the lock combination.