Just a few weeks ago on June 12, 2016, many innocent people were shot and killed at the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, Florida, marking the most deadly shooting in America.
This massacre shows how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a gun - even assault rifles. It got me thinking... is this the kind of country I want to live in? Is this the kind of country America is? We have two choices - let it be or actively try to do something to change things.
I understand that we must protect our people and our country, but to turn against each other as an act of terrorism is just pure hate and destruction. The only prevention for these deadly shooting attacks I can find feasible is gun control.
You would think that our country would have more laws that restricted assaulted-style weapons after all the gun-induced tragedies America and its people have suffered. Less guns equals a decrease in gun deaths. It makes sense to me.
But, it doesn't make sense to some people. Not everyone sees the necessity of gun control. I know that for some people, their automatic response to gun control would be, "Hell no." If I told this to my uncle, who hunts regularly and likes to have security for the house, or my brother, who will be fighting in the U.S. Marines on the front lines as infantry, they would both think that I'm crazy.
However, I came across a really good article that brings up some valid points and got me to think more about the need for gun control. The article is called "Giving Up Guns for the Country's Good" by Dan Rodricks of the "The Baltimore Sun." In this article, Rodricks talks about people giving up their guns for the good of their country. For most people, this may seem like a foreign concept.
The article talks of one man who called the police after the Orlando Massacre to give up a gun he no longer wished to own. It was a .22 caliber semi-automatic rifle with an 18-round capacity that can fire as fast as you can squeeze the trigger. This man bought the rifle when he was young, mostly because he could just do it. He did not come from a family of gun owners. He did not want to be a hunter and had not thought about self-defense. He was young and thought that owning a gun was part of the passage to "American manhood." There have been many mass shootings since he got the gun, such as the one in Sandy Hook and the Orlando Massacre. This man decided to give up his gun to make one less gun in a country filled with them.
The killings in Orlando have me scared enough. It's so easy for murderers, or anyone, to get guns. How many more must suffer and die for us to finally stand up and say no to weapons meant for war? If you have guns that you are not using, I encourage you to give them to a government-sponsored buy-back program.
One less gun could mean one less death.
