The concept of self determination and autonomy is strong to most Americans.
We don't like having to rely on someone else for our own safety. The police will never get there in time to save you. Judo isn't going to save the elderly from a mugging or a small woman from a gang rape. A gun can though.
What choice do you have when a criminal breaks into your home? Do you cry out to them "look out I'm calling the police" and then return to cower in your hiding place hoping they don't cause you or your loved ones physical harm?
We like being able to hunt and provide food for our families. It's a very primal thing that most people have lost touch with. To be out in the wilderness stalking an animal as a predator. It's something we have done for Eons. We've done it for longer than we've been people for christ's sake. I can provide myself top quality meat doing this at a fraction of the cost. Plus I know where it came from and that it lived a better life than some cow in a slaughter farm.
The entire concept of the U.S. was built on people who were sick of their government fucking them over. So they kicked the government out. We wouldn't have been able to do that without guns, so we enshrined it in our constitution should it ever happen again. It's literally the second amendment because it's nearly as important as freedom of speech, and not the watered down freedom of speech they have over there in europe. We want it all, hate speech and the lot of it. Not because we like hate speech, but because we believe good ideas stand on their own merit and bad ideas should be aired out in public and debated and dismissed so as not to fester clandestinely.
Many lives have been sacrificed on the altar of gun rights just as many feelings have been hurt and lives lost because of our freedom of speech. The sacrifice is well worth it and will continue.
in short "freedom is not free" also
“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -Ben Franklin