I went to the Victorville Gun Show today. I walked away the proud owner of an Airsoft MP5. (Basically a BB gun.) It did remind me of the, ahem, Democrats stomping their feet about the "gun show loophole."

Gun control proponents argue that people can go into gunshows and walk out with guns that day. This is true (to some extent) but fails to give the whole picture. State laws are generally stricter than federal laws. For example, in California where I live the state requires that all transfers of guns require a 15 day waiting period. In other states only the primary transfer of a gun (sales from the dealer) has a waiting period and that secondary sales (from a private party) has no waiting periods and no background check. So, yes you can go to a gunshow and buy a gun from a private party, but then again you could do it at a streetcorner as well and still be legal.

Do the police have an obligation to protect you?

In a word, no. The courts are very clear on this topic in several landmark rulings:

Hartlzer v. City of San Jose
DeShaney v. Winnebago Department of Social Services
Warren v. District of Columbia

Of the three cases the most interesting to me is the third. The short version of the story is as follows: Two women heard their roomate downstairs being attacked by intruders. The two women called the police station and were told that officers were on their way. When their roomates screams stopped they assumed that the police had arrived. They were wrong. For the next 14 hours the women were forced to... (I am sure you can find it on the web if you really want to know.) As expected, the women sued the city. The opinion of the court was that it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen."