Charlie Hall- While your story is sad, there are two main comments I would like to write:
*the average time for police/911 to answer a call is approximately 9 minutes or more. If the intruder is armed, your friend could of been shot and the intruder long gone before the police arrived.
*your friend could have committed suicide in a number of ways. Are we going to ban kitchen knives? medication (overdose)? ooo-lets now ban sheets and towels because I can hang myself with them! Or crash my car purposely into a tree. or drown myself in a pool or bathtub. Banning guns would not have stopped the suicide- if he did not get help he could have done it in numerous other ways.