Considering recent events in our country regarding gun violence, it has been proven that when given large amounts of firepower, people are going to become a recipe for disaster.
Steps need to be taken to create stricter laws in this country for buying guns and placing a ban on most semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazines. The only people that need that much firepower are law enforcement and the military. There is no need for someone outside of those two areas to have assault weapons containing that many rounds.
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza had access to an assault-type rifle and fired multiple magazines containing 20-30 rounds each on his massacred killing of 26 people, most of them children. This isn’t the first time there’s been a mass shooting with the use of assault weapons. No single person needs that much firepower on hand.
According to a study by the University of Pennsylvania, over 25 percent of all gun crimes involve guns with high-capacity magazines. The study did note that since the rate of a shooter hitting victims is low in gun crimes, the ability to fire more shots faster increased the likelihood of targets being hit.
There is vocal opposition to change the laws surrounding gun control. Second amendment advocates worry about laws limiting their rights to own a gun. But let’s be honest; no one is trying to “take our guns away,” because the right to bear arms is in the second amendment. People who work with the government are just trying to create legislature that will tighten gun laws and prevent large-scale massacres from happening again. The second amendment is never going to be changed to eliminate all guns.
Achieving the goal of banning assault style weapons and creating laws to enable more intense background checks before purchasing a gun will take the combined efforts of state and national legislature. Only after these measures are taken are we on our way to a safer country as a whole.
–By Meredith Norman