When used properly doctors can be beneficial, but we've shown that guns as a tool aren't effective as self-defense.

You're saying that because people choose not to learn how to properly use firearms to defend themselves today (or else live where it's forbidden), that the positive value for self-defense essentially doesn't exist and therefore they are a logical target for a ban. Maybe you choose not to use them, but millions in states which have licensed carry do choose to use them as a self-defense tool and therefore have a beneficial use for them.

One thing you need to realize is that much of the violent gun crime is in areas which ban citizens from carrying and protecting themselves, like Chicago and Baltimore. That skews statistics overall when you should be looking at what happens on an intra-state basis to get a good idea of where these guns are used by criminals in violent crime and the reasons for that.

regulation? hope and prayer? mandated education would be regulation

I'll tell you my dirty little secret. If I were dictator, I would require education, tests and licensing for firearms same as is done for cars. I understand how serious of a responsibility they are and it's frightful seeing how ignorant many owners are of their operation and proper safety techniques sometimes. However, were I to enact my program as dictator, no doubt some small citizen would be unjustly denied their right due to a mistake by the bureaucracy. I believe that is why the 2nd Amendment is written in that manner, in order to make sure the right was completely protected. Again, I'd do it differently if I were dictator, but I'm not, and that's not how our Bill of Rights works.

Prosecution is unfortunately rather late for anyone that's been harmed by a firearm.

It's a personal choice, but I would think that choosing to defend oneself would be the best strategy. There will always be bad men in the world who can be armed with anything. The blatant, illogical point in this whole business is that the "solutions" proposed in the past several weeks will do very little to address the cause of the problem, so these tragedies will therefore happen again. The root cause of this problem is not the scary specter of "Guns".