Here's the sad thing. We wouldn't NEED guns to protect ourselves if guns had never been invented at all. It's a really depressing thing to know that out of thousands of years of human evolution, some of our biggest "advances" are the invention of violent weapons like guns and bombs.
But I am not for gun control. Now that guns HAVE been invented, they ARE needed for protection. We don't have one, yet, but we have been considering it. But having small children in the house we would definately keep it locked up in an out-of-the-way location and I doubt the kids would ever even know we had it, much less where it was. And I certainly wouldn't leave them alone in the house NOW, and we don't even HAVE a gun yet.
Parents leaving their kids home alone with guns in the house... parents smoking so much dope around their kids that they know how to make a bomb at age 5... ARGH! But what's the solution? Adding mandatory drug testing for all parents once a month? Making parenting classes mandatory in middle school and again in high school? Obviously not, but what can be done?
Bad parents often spawn more bad parents. *sigh*