>>ok, let me rephrase that. What really is the reason to have the right to own a gun, while its about 40 times more likely that gun will wound or kill the someone living in the house and other innocent people rather than one who tries to break into the house or kill you? What is so important in the rights to own a gun to justify thousands of these gun related deaths each year?

>The fact that criminals will still acquire them, legal or not.

I cannot call that a valid argument at all. Criminals will be able to acquire handgranades, hard drugs, high explosives, etc. Is that a valid reason for everyone to acquire them? The odds are totally against you when a criminal with a gun is threatening you. If you carry a gun, you're less likely to come out of that situation unharmed than when you don't. If you try to use it, it gets even worse. Chances are high you're going to get killed. This not an opinion, its a simple fact.

That is what every safety officer is learning you, don't try to be a hero, if they want to rob you, let them have your money in stead of your life.

>Having a close relative who was forced to shoot an intruder (who shot at her first when he gained access to her home after her repeatedly yelling she was calling the police and she had a gun). I have a few other friends who needed (and some used and some did not) a weapon at home for protection. But that is just one example. I have read thousands of police reports. Home security is just one reason, but it is a real reason.

Its like driving a nail in with a sledge hammer. The first focus of home safety is to make sure intruders can't just walk in. Make sure that doors and windows are locked and made of quality materials so that it would take at least 5 minutes to get in by using ordinary tools (Up here all new houses are build like that and have a "police certificate"). If you're still concerned, an security system, owning a dog etc could help as well. If you still need more safety insurance, use less lethal weapons like baseball bats or even a blunt sword for protection if you need to. In the very unlikely event that you are still faced with an intruder, make sure you co-operate, don't be a hero.

The odds that this intruder is going to kill you is (on the average) at the least ten times smaller than (reports say over 40 times), than a gun in your house is going to kill someone unintentional. Do you really want to take that chance ? Are you really loving the gun more than your beloved ones? (I know this sound hard, but this is really what it boils down to).

>The other reasons have been covered too numerous times to list them - I'll just refer to the 2nd and 14th amendments - regardless of how so many get it wrong here.

This does not make sense to me either. Documents that have written about two hundred years ago were based upon the society of those days. The founding fathers, when writing the rights to carry a gun, did not have automatic assault rifles with large magazines in mind to be carried by normal citizens. Society has changed, and needs to change. For the same reason, we don't live by the written lines of the bible (I know some do), as their rules were written in the context of a total different society than today.

I know stats can be unreliable, but the numbers are so impressive that you cannot get away with excuses that its not the problem of widespread availability of the gun. In the US you're at the least 4 times more likely to get shot than anywhere in Europe. In The Netherlands its about 20 times. That is not to say that incidents don't happen here: they do, but if you look at the numbers over a 10 years period the evidence is overwhelming.

The problem is really in your society where gun ownership is so embedded in your culture, that it is impossible to start a pragmatic discussion. Special interest groups (NRA) are having a huge and unhealthy influence on politics. The two party system in your country is paralyzing the politics to be able to do something about it. Having tighter gun control was part of obama's 2008 election campaign, but he could not force this through because of too much political resistance.

To rephrase Obama on his speech last night. "Do we accept these incidents to be routine?" and "Are we as the american society doing enough to guarantee a safe and happy family life? the answer is no." Bear in mind that it is the 4th time this happened during his 4 years of presidency. So what do you want to do about it? Do you hold on to the rights to carry a gun at the cost of the lives of thousands of children each year (According to the CDC more than 3000 from the age 0 to 19) ? Are you dismissing the numbers by saying gun control is not going to change that? Are you not willing to make a change because you are unsure it will not help? Are you dismissing the fact that the "gun violence" rate is the US is multiple times higher than in any other western country in the world? Are you willing to come up with all kinds of excuses for these fact, just "to stick to your guns" ?

I realize that the discussion is about emotions and tightly embedded in American culture and it will be impossible to ban guns from society tomorrow. The whole discussion in favour of gun rights has absolutely nothing to do with pragmatics, because if it were that case, they'd have been banned a long, long time ago.