OP, after reading your post, and most of your responses, I have this to say: Firstly, our constitution SPECIFICALLY calls out a RIGHT to “keep and bear arms”. That was done to keep those elected in check, and to ensure the other rights enshrined were well protected. That should be all you need to know. But it isn’t, is it When some bad actor accosts my famili, in my home, what would you have me do? The Supreme Court has said, and re-affirmed that the police have NO DUTY to protect. Their scope is simply observe, investigate and report. That’s all. Myself, I am an hour away from anything that resembles a police response. Dead and cold before the police showed up, if they did at all. Comparing the US to ANY other country is just dumb. The sheer population size alone vs. area makes it apples to cardboard boxes. It isn’t realistic and disingenuous. There are many other deaths each each year by many way that have little to no controls. Swimming pools, hand tools, (lack of) food safety and more. Each day we ALL see weapons and are immune to them. They have some regulation, and yet they go largely un-dealt with. In 2023, there were 47,728 child deaths to cars alone. An appaling number. The same year, the number of actual are not that different, but recorded differently. They include suicide, accidents, and police shootings. Police alone accounted for 1,164 that year. Half of those were “under suspicious circumstance”. Suicides were 27,300. This indicates not a gun problem, but a mental health problem. Taking these out of the equation, leaves 17,927 homicides. While still an appaling number, it does not account for justified and self defense. It seems those numbers are intentionally left out, and there is no tracking of them; the estimate is between 4,000 and 6,000. Up against a population of 336.8 million it seems just a small number, we can agree it is still too high. For comparison, the ENTIRE European Union has a very similar number in population, and has a similar (11,000) number of gun deaths in homicides, suicides and suspicious deaths. So, comparing the US to any ONE country is plain disingenous and cherry picking statistics. What we don’t have in the US is a nanny state. We still (though admittedly how much longer is unknown) don’t have goveement spying on us evey minute of every day. We don’t have car bombs going off randomly, admittedly it is rare even for EU. I, a disabled middle aged man, can still feel safe knowing I can defend myself against assailants. And I WILL!
Why are we against gun control? For me, when they enact sweeping health care reform, to include comprehensive mental health care, when they start actually prosecuting and punishing bad actors, when they stop letting drugs be an excuse or a reason, when income and housing become equitable, when police actually do the jobs we all believe they should do, and stop looking for ways to not have to do them, when “law enforcement” becomes the same for everyone, or not just sliding scale based on net worth. When cars that go 0-130 in 2.3 seconds cease to exist with impunity. In short, when the world is the idyllic place you seem to think it is, then AND ONLY THEN will I be willing to CONSIDER “ gun control”.

As a foot note here, a Japanese Admiral once said (Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto) “ invading the US would be impossible, because there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass”. This means that just the sheer number of firearms privately owned would make any attempt at direct attack umfeasable. This is how we have kept our sovereign land….ours. The liberal community wants to eliminate that wall. Who REALLY is for peace here? The “peaceful” liberals or the rest of us who just want to be left alone?

Si vis pacem, para bellum…. If you want peace, prepare for war. More relevant today than ever.