For those of you that have disagreed with my previous post, how about this. When I'm 40, I'll come back to this thread and let you know how my life has panned out without having owned a gun.
No matter how many stories you tell me of particular families or individuals getting robbed, raped, murdered, whatever, and they didn't have a gun to protect themselves, I will still stand by my opinion on the matter. We all have different ways of doing things, different opinions, different lifestyles, different perspectives. Think what you want, believe what you want, do things the way you want. Neither opinion is correct. We just have different ways of living.
I highly doubt I will ever need a gun. Ever. If I ever get raped or robbed or taken hostage, perhaps I will come back here and say, "Ok, maybe having a gun would have helped me." But I seriously highly doubt it will ever happen. Well, I have been raped before, but would a gun have mattered? Doesn't matter now. Sure, bad things have happened to me, but I still don't think that a gun would have been the answer.