Who wants guns? (with poll)

Every fall, my mother would refuse to let my sisters and me play in the back yard.  It was deer hunting season and you just never knew what those city folks from Chicago or Milwaukee would do when they were let loose in the "wilds" of southern Wisconsin cornfields.  I grew up hearing the stories....

A little girl was killed by a hunter while she was waiting for the school bus.  A farmer with a life-size replica of a black and white Holstein cow in his field (Who knows why -- it is a Wisconsin thing, I think) complaining how his statue was so badly scarred by bullets during deer season that he put it in his barn every fall.  The attitude in our house was, "The crazy deerhunters are coming -- run and hide!!!"  Nevertheless, deer hunting was something of a right of passage for the kids I grew up with -- mainly the boys, but some girls, too.  So I heard lots of stories about shooting "10 point bucks".  I actually like Bambi meat and Bambi sausage and the only way to get it is by hunting.  Hunters actually serve to cull the herds, taking the place of predators which are now extinct in the area.  

Not surprisingly, given my experience, I am ambivalent about many forms of gun control.  In some ways I think of it as a country/city thing.  Hunting guns make sense to me -- my rural roots are showing.  However, hand guns and assault weapons have never made sense to me.   Their only purpose is to kill people.  Are they for self-defense?  But don't statistics show they are more often used against loved ones than burglars?  Are we expecting an invasion?  It has always seemed that Southerners love their guns because they are still expecting the North to invade again.  Is that it?  Are they just fun?