How do you reconcile the general "Freedoms and Rights" aspects with the inherent (and avoidable) increase in deaths when you couple firearms with lack of responsibility/training/common sense?
It is difficult, isn't it? How do you tell a parent whose child was killed in a crossfire between a 'citizen' and a 'bad guy' that the citizen did nothing wrong, although their shots went wild and killed their child? I would not want to be the one having to explain something like this.
Freedom means that sometimes bad things will happen, even very bad things, because we chose not to live in a nation that attempted to regulate whatever that bad thing is, or which denied the government the power to monitor, investigate, and otherwise interfere with bad things happening.
Wiretap laws means some bad guys get to have discussions about crimes without being detected. Freedom of religion means there are religions that want me dead, but they still have the right to believe that if they wish. Freedom of the press and speech means hate groups get to spout their hatred and foment violence and chaos. The right to bear arms means that some people who should never have guns will have them, and all that that implies.
We place limits on freedoms, even in the USA. Generally, those limits are placed where they infringe upon the rights of others, or are so clearly harmful to the immediate safety of others that such behavior cannot be permitted (the classic example is yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater - it's not protected 'free speech').
But in the USA, we are traditionally wary of placing limits on freedoms. We tend, as a nation, to place fewer restrictions that perhaps some other countries do (although that is changing). Part of that is because of our national reluctance to trust government with power, and part of it is because the rules put in place by our founders actually prevent it.
More freedom equals more danger. You can't be free and protected (or rather, you can, but only in the sense that an absolute power chooses to act benevolently). At one end of the spectrum is a society that holds all the power and protects its citizens against all dangers - even dangers to themselves in some cases. At the other is anarchy. The US exists somewhere between those two extremes, as does most of the rest of the world. But the US is a bit farther over to the 'more freedom, more danger' side than most.
Another point to consider is this: making guns more available to people increases the risk that they will be used the wrong way. On the other hand, making them less available to people only restricts access to the people that follow the law in the first place; it in no way restricts criminals who want guns but who cannot obtain them legally. Given that an armed citizen has a better chance to survive a gunfight with an armed criminal than an unarmed citizen, I'd choose to be armed if given the chance.
And my final point is this: making guns more available does not make them mandatory, but making them less available does serve to prohibit them. In other words, if you don't want a gun, don't buy one. No one is making anyone purchase one who doesn't want one.
