"There are not many people in this world who won't take a pause when a gun is pointed at them and many defensive gun uses in the US (of which the estimates range from 300,000 to upwards of 3,000,000) don't even require the firearm to be discharged."

The vast majority, otherwise we'd have some truly amazing gun injury and death statistics. From memory of some of the survey results, the first by a gun control group which figured 1 million uses but didn't check for more than one use a year, it was either around 85% or a bit over 90% where the gun being used in self-defense is not discharged, the credible threat is enough. Even more without anyone getting hit, or hit badly.