The problem of Guns is not really the legally obtained guns

Criminals are always going to have automatic rifles and AK-47s and other assault rifles whether law abiding citizens do or not. Gun laws ONLY affect law abiding citizens. So, this is important for people to remember.

If you don't have a gun to protect yourself in an emergency who is going to protect you?

The police?

That is a joke for most people in the U.S. because many people live too far away from police stations to matter. Maybe in a big city where the police might be only 5 to 12 blocks away you might not die from an assailant if you cannot protect yourself. But, especially west of the Mississippi River often people are living 5, 10, 15, 20 25 or even 50 to 100 miles from the nearest policeman or Sheriff. In these situations you have no hope to survive when often there is not even cell phone service where you are. If you cannot protect yourself from WHATEVER happens you are just dead or maimed or raped. Period.

So, people in the Northeast who live in cities close to police protection often forget many many of us live too far away for the police to do anything but put bodies into a body bag if anything bad happens. So, out west, especially you either protect yourself or you are going to be dead if you find yourself in a bad situation.

This is why so many many people in the West and the South are so very well armed and will be even better armed now after this terrorist killing of 14 people with 21 wounded in San Bernadino, California.

However, if you are not well trained how to use and care for pistols or rifles then you need training how to do this. You need to have lock boxes that only you know the combination for especially for pistols. Often you have no place to hide your rifles from children so you need at the very least to hide your bullets from them where they cannot find them in regard to both pistols and rifles.

And keeping your guns unloaded with ammunition stored a different hidden place than where you hide or store your guns is important too, especially if you have children. If you have children under 12 you especially need to lock up your pistols in lock boxes like I said before too.

Gun ranges often give classes to teach people how to better use and protect themselves and those around them from their weapons and how to be accurate with shooting their weapons in an emergency.

I was trained between 8 and 9 years old to be accurate with a rifle up to 100 yards or more to hit anything that wasn't moving too fast. But, that was a part of the last 400 years of how this culture trained it's children as hunters which also doubles as warriors in times of war or unrest.

The point originally was feeding your family and protecting your family from harm if you were over 6 years old or younger than that if you had an older brother to supervise you learning how to use a gun. It's been like this for 400 years here in the U.S.