When we were younger, many of us were taught that rules are there to keep us safe. Now that we’re older, we have more responsibility and a greater voice in the making of rules and laws. That should make us have a greater concern in our own safety and government even more. Why don’t we take that basic early life lesson we know is true and apply it to our recent situation — gun control? We, as citizens of the United States, need laws or at least background checks to keep our country safe and organized.

Gun control is a serious disagreeing debate being argued upon around the world. In America, you hear a lot about this. There are two main sides. On one side there is anti-gun laws supporters who believe that we shouldn't have laws preventing our gun ownership. On the other side, there is pro-gun supporters that believe that we need to establish laws for our country to be safer. There can be varying in the middle or leaning toward one side or another.

Guns are dangerous weapons that can instantly snatch a life away with one shot. Do we really want every person, even the ones with obvious intentions of murdering and a long time criminal history, to have the right to own and use that kind of weapon? Any person can go on the internet and purchase a gun for themselves anonymously without a license or record check. That includes people who have criminal records and could do future harm. Fran Berkman wrote an article that states that possibly more than 25,000 potential illegal transactions of guns have been made offered in forms of an ad this year on armslist.com. It is now easier to get a hold of a gun and a lot more dangerous since we don’t know much about that person. Not everyone has the responsibility to have dangerous weapons at their fingertips.

Guns are many things -- weapons, killing machines, war destructors. One thing they’ll never be is a toy for children, but that’s exactly what is happening. Guns aren’t toys and shouldn’t be kept near children who have young minds and can’t make clear right choices yet. There are many cases of lost lives of children due to gun shootings. Many of those shootings are committed accidently by other small children who have no idea of the capabilities of the weapon in their hand. In some cases, these small children are close family or friends who were just “playing around”. Michael Lou and Mike McIntyre from the New York Times wrote about many of these stories in their article “Children and Guns: The Hidden Toll”. There was a situation where a 12 year old boy was trusted with a gun to scare coyotes but was instead playing with it and pretended to shoot his 11 year old sister, thinking that all the bullets were taken out, but ended up killing her. An 11 year old boy also was practicing for gun safety class and took a gun out of the gun cabinet his family owned. When he went to put the gun back, he shot his older sister. No parents were home. The mother was reported to be at work. Situations like this really reminds you that little children shouldn’t have easy access to gun like this. These shootings aren’t marked as accidental, but sometimes are marked under “homicide” because it is blamed on the parent’s duty to protect their children. That can hurt a child’s future career. We can prevent this with gun laws removing them from the hands of children.

The gun’s purpose is killing. That’s all a gun can do. Self defence isn’t an excuse for the ownership of one of these killers. Baldr Ordinson from Ceasefire Oregon, an organization that works to reduce gun violence, wrote about this in his article titled “Alternatives to Gun Ownership for Home Protection”. His research states that “For every gun that is used for self-defense, there are 11 guns in homes used for completed or attempted suicides, 7 used in criminal assaults and homicides, and 4 used in unintentional shooting deaths or injuries (Kellermann, 1998, p. 263). In other words, a gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to harm someone in the household than to protect them.” There are now have other ways of self defence, including tasers and pepper spray. They can prolong time enough to run away and call for help from the police. Guns aren’t necessary for defence. They aren’t the only option anymore.

People may claim that gun shooting isn’t the top cause of death or near the top for that matter. It may not be the first or second cause of death, but it does make the top ten at number seven. According to Michael Luo and Mike McIntyre of the New York Times, if deaths were recorded properly and then doubled, it would easily make its way to second place which is a really big leap. Just because it isn’t near the top, doesn’t mean it won’t be in the future if this continues. This is actually really scary to think about and more people need to realize this.

The second amendment may take away our rights to owning guns, but are those right directed toward us in the first place? The second amendment states that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Who are the “well regulated militia” it is referring to? It used to mean that the citizens have a right to use a gun to protest if the government wasn’t obeying its own constitution. Also, what about first sentence of the constitution? Why is that ignored? As Jay Troop intelligently states in his article “The Conservative Case for Gun Control in America”, the government’s main role is to keep us, its citizens, safe. They are there to “insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” That is the main point of the Constitution. That is why it’s in the first sentence.

Everyone ignorantly craves for rights, but what about their own safety? We need gun laws to protect all our fellow citizens. Rules are there to keep us safe and it’s about time we start making some about gun control.