Humans are terrible illogical beings at best. History has shown that we are incapbale of making sane decisions, regardless of the situation. Fun fact, in the thousands of years the world has been around and has been inhabbited by human beings, there has only been 200 years of total peace.
Guns are a menace, and should be accessible only to law enforcement establishments.
What about all the guns being trucked/shipping in to criminals?
how are civilians to defend themselves?
DO NOT say "Law enforcement will come and protect you blah blah blah"
I will use my homestate as an example.
In NH there are < 3,000 Police Officers. The average response time to a 9-1-1 call in my town is 11 minutes.
In those 11 minutes, let's say someone has broken into your house, at night, without your consent, with the intent to commit a felony therein (textbook definition of Burglary), however you are present and they plan to steal directly from you to (Robbery -Larceny from A PERSON by FORCE or FEAR). They are equipped with an illegally obtained Bushmaster AR-15 (about $3,000 from pictures I have seen of the former SilkRoad). You dial 9-1-1 from your cell phone and hide in your room. In those 11 minutes, I find it EXTREMELY POSSIBLE that the intruder could find you in your room and see that you have dialed 9-1-1 and they have asked you to stay on the line while they transfer you to LOCAL PD. Do you think they are going to be all happy-go-lucky and give you a back massage for calling 9-1-1 on them? No! They will probably either a) take you as a hostage or b) shoot you and grab what they can before fleeing.
Most LEOs in my city are 100% for the LAWFUL obtainment and use of firearms by civilians. I was able to get my conceal and carry permit within 3 days of applying. (I needed to provide all my information including SSN, License, Passport, and references).
Your statement is foolhardy and invalid.
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EDIT:
"Cities with less than 10,000 residents reported an average of 3.5 officers per 1,000 inhabitants, the largest officer to individual rate among city population groups."
Sooooo if you live in a city with 25,000 people, you have LESS THAN 3.5 officers/1,000 people in your city [on average].
Please tell me how 1.11111666 (3 Shifts/day) people can actively protect 1,000 in the middle of the night. They work damn hard to do so, but seems pretty illogical.
Source:
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/police/
THE MAX I see is an average of 3.9/1,000 People and that is only if you live in the South Atlantic. This has an overall max in the South Atlantic Row of 7.6, which when you do the math, is an outlier.
Source:
http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2009/data/table_70.html
EDIT: Guns aren't bad, people are bad.