I'm not gonna get a gun to "protect" myself when there's a very tiny chance of something like that happening.
It might be a very tiny chance where you live and it actually is a very tiny chance where I live too, but there are places in both your country and mine where people can count on that to happen. The difference is that in most part of
your country people have the precious gift to get guns like free men and use them for protecting their property and the lives of themselves and their loved ones. We don't have that right.
Even the few who actually have a license to have a gun in their homes here, which is the only place where a gun is legal to have except for at hunting and in shooting clubs, risk jail if they use the gun against burglars breaking into their homes...
Cowards protect themselves with guns.
How could it ever be cowardly to protect yourself with the same means that those who might attack you have?
A better solution is to make it harder for the criminals to get the guns.
A person convicted for a felony will never get a gun legally in our country. Yet they have them anyway, while most law abiding people don't even try to get a license, becuase it's too difficult and expensive and they don't know how to get a gun illegally...
And wouldn't it be embarassing if someone owned a gun to protect themselves and still got shot first by the criminal?
I wouldn't feel embarassed if I were dead, and I'd rather have a reasonable chance to protect myself then being a slaughter sheep. Slaughter sheeps don't have guns...