How does an average American gun-owning citizen rationally justify his/her possession of gun(s)?

To slightly paraphrase Niccolò Machiavelli, "There can be no proper relationships when some are armed and some are not." This is perhaps the original liberal idea, propounded at the dawn of the Age of Enlightenment. By dusk of that liberal age when our Constitution became its foremost embodiment, that idea was well settled, and should remain so.
 
If firearms did not exist and in particular small handguns, we'd be back in the circumstances where brute strength ruled and women, children and the elderly were at a distinct disadvantage. Society has become substantially more civilized by virtue of having heeded Machiavelli.

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