So ask the threat to wait a 5+ minutes while you call the cops?

Should we DRM 3D printers (DMLS@home is coming) to a walled garden of things? The 2nd Amendment is not separable from general purpose computing. Who needs "assult crypto" anyway?

Police in United States do not have to protect you:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-pol...

Average national response time is 10 minutes, even in cities the median is 5min, but can be as high as 30min for some remote areas.

In certain situations there may be no police response at all, as was the case in 1992 Los Angeles riots or practically any major natural disaster.

The ‘let the police do it’ argument would only logically work with incredibly pervasive and invasive surveillance technology and/or police robots (https://goo.gl/wpMV8).

Even so, 2nd amendment would be even more relevant to balance the killer robots.

This isn't like organizing roles at a startup company. We're talking about an individual's right to defend themselves against someone bigger and stronger, someone with a weapon who wants to take your shit or fuck you or just fuck you up.

You put much faith in the Government, and I put it in the individual.

What happens when your police force is turned against you, becomes incompetent, gets lazy, or just doesn't show up?

It's idealistic. Life is a struggle for the individual, no matter how much we'd like to forget it or offload our worries.

That might be a good argument in theory, if it wasn't for the part where US police don't have to protect citizens and all the population that are outside of effective police coverage. It's not the argument gun control campaigners seem to be making right now. They mainly seem to have gone for the approach of supporting police officers standing by and doing nothing as kids are murdered one by one. Given that, I suspect you're going to have a hard time convincing people who don't already agree with you that they should give up their guns and let the police take care of everything.

Why not defend yourself with a towel??

It's a valid question. If we had something like phasers instead of firearms, I'd be more than happy to use those exclusively. The problem is we don't really have a good alternative. Tasers that shoot tend to be one shot solutions, and even then they don't always bring down targets, or they might prove as lethal. Rubber bullets you can fire multiple of, but they could cause serious damage too, especially if shot in succession, and there is no guarantee of taking the target down. There just isn't a solid alternative right now.