I'll start by saying we do not have a gun problem in this country. We have a people problem. Speaking of people problems, I started reading these comments in hope of finding a different attitude than what I have been hearing around the topic of gun control lately. To me, HackerNews has usually been a place with more educated and informed comments but I didn't really find that here. I'm still finding misinformed people who have never fired a gun before, researched crime statistics or seriously thought about this issue making comments about how people "do not need to protect themselves"

I'm a gun owner, in fact I own many guns, I also carry a gun every single day. I'm also an honest and law abiding citizen. I have several years of defensive training with firearms and improvised weapons. I attend shooting matches and training schools with other law abiding gun owners nearly every weekend.

I can tell you that the vast majority of people who have a gun are good people and not the <1% of psychotic killers we have been seeing on the news lately.

I see some people here saying "There's some reason you have police, military, para-military and federal agencies so that citizens don't have to handle this aspect of security."

To me, this is a really misinformed comment. Does anyone here really believe that when your life is imminent danger that you are better off with a cell phone in your hand calling the police and waiting for them to arrive than you are with a gun in your hand using everything you possibly can to protect yourself and your family?

Does anyone here really believe that criminals follow laws? If a movie theater has a sign out side saying "This is a gun free zone, no guns allowed" do you really think that a psychopathic killer or angry criminal is going to turn around and go home because the sign said they can't bring a gun into that movie theater?

And does anyone really believe that criminals follow laws? Lets ban magazines that hold more than 7 rounds. Sounds like a great idea right? So that criminal that is planning to go kill some people today is going to wake up and decide that he is going to load his firearm to only the legal capacity. Or he is not going to go purchase a gun illegally, buy it off the street or steel it. Because that would be illegal and we all know that criminals follow laws...

So forget the constitution and the 2nd amendment for a moment, because I know people like to argue about what the Founding Fathers really meant by it. Do you really believe that we should not have the right to protect ourselves from active shooters, murderers, rapist and cold blooded killers with a highly affective tool just because a select few people have used that tool to do evil?

If guns didn't exist and everything else were the same and these evil people still had intent to do harm do you really believe that they would just give up because they had no other way to harm people? A gun is only a tool, just like a knife, a car, or a screw driver. All of which can do some serious harm to a person. Should we ban those things too?

I know some people are sheep and guns are not for everyone, they expect and hope that if they get put in a bad situation that the police will be there to save them. Just remember that it is NOT the job of the police to protect you. Their job is to uphold the law and to react to those breaking the law. It's fine if you personally want nothing to do with guns but that doesn't mean you have the right to tell others that they shouldn't be able to protect themselves.

So if you really want to make comments on how gun control should be and if people really need guns to protect themselves, please do some research first. I encourage you to look up how many guns that are purchased legally are actually used in a violent crime. Look at the crime rates of cities with strict gun laws and look at the data on the increase of gun purchases vs. the decrease in crime over the last few years. The FBI has some great statistics for this[1].

Here's a interesting video from a Sandy Hook father whose child was at Sandy Hook the day of the shooting and how he feels about guns: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhXPlCjr0Vw

[1]http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/c...