About guns for personal defense

This is in response to a blog wherein the writer defends carrying guns - and does a darn good job of it, I might add, he's a good writer and brings up good points. However, because I'm fired up about the case in Sanford. FL, where a guy is going free after shooting an unarmed, unthreatening teenager, I had to run my mouth - uh, make that keyboard.
First off, let me say that I am not anti-gun. I have owned a gun, don’t happen to now, but I grew up in a house with rifles and shotguns and know how to handle them. I’m not anti-gun, what I am anti is the ease with which they are available to the people who use them to do harm, and the size and scope of the guns available to those people. If the person you speak of comes up to you with their gun out, cocked and ready to fire, and yours is in your holster or pocket, what happens when you reach to draw it? Unless the gun is in your hand, loaded, with one in the chamber, cocked and safety off - it’s kind of like tits on a boar hog. And can you 100% guarantee that the person accosting you won’t take the gun away and use it themselves to continue their crimes? Maybe you’d have enough warning with the mountain lion, but if it jumps from the tree you’re walking under onto your back, that’s gonna be quite a contest, for you to draw it while keeping the big cat from chewing your face/hand/arm/leg off.
Yeah, you can name call me whatever political/social label you want. But I think something needs to happen to keep so many wrong people from having weapons of destruction. You may not agree, but I think people who lost loved ones at Virginia Tech, Columbine, Chardon, in Binghamton, NY, Omaha, NE, Brookfield, WI, Santa Clara, CA, and on down the list would.
And as far as the vigilante justice you promote, I bet the farm that the parents of Trayvon Martin, the boy gunned down in Sanford, FL would disagree with it. He was killed by a ‘Neighborhood Watch’ captain, who was advised by police to not follow the ‘suspicious stranger in the neighborhood’, but who followed the 17 year old boy anyway, and shot and killed him. In a gated community, while the boy was walking home to his father’s house from going to the store. Mr. Quick On The Trigger claims that he was defending himself, and so police have not charged him with any crime. This, despite the fact that the boy was armed with nothing more than a bag of Skittles and an iced tea. Pretty threatening, huh? No charges, despite the fact that witnesses in the area heard no altercation, nothing until they heard a young person crying and then shots. Yes, I sure do bet that Trayvon’s parents disagree with everyone owning a gun and being allowed to shoot whoever they deem threatening. I know I do.
I wonder how many actual criminals, who actually mean harm to the people they go after, are stopped by someone using a gun? As opposed to the innocent people, like Trayvon, like those in all the places listed above. And yes, I know, if you are the one who stops them from harming you or yours, that’s the important thing. But what if, just what if, you’re like George Zimmerman, the man not charged with killing an innocent young man – oh, and you do get charged with it? What then? Oh, right, in jail nobody has guns, so you don’t need yours for protection there.
I guess I’ll be dead if those hard-asses you talk about come after me, because I don’t have a pistol, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have it in the ready to fire mode at every moment-and that’s what’s needed to be as prepared as you claim we should be. But I kind of think maybe I’d almost rather that than use my gun to kill a 17 year old boy, whose only crime seems to have been WWB (Walking While Black) because I imagined a threat, or created one so that I could have the excuse to gun down an innocent person.
I respect your choice to carry a gun, as I do everyone else’s choices. I do not respect the choices and laws that make it so easy for those that should not have them to do so. That’s what needs fixing, so there are no more Virginia Tech’s or Binghamton, NY’s – and no more Trayvon Martin’s.