As of today, 11 shootings have taken place this year on the grounds of schools and universities throughout the United States. Extremely disturbed individuals have opened fire in educational settings with the intention of causing harm to others, themselves, or both.

11 cases of gun violence at schools in just January of 2018 alone. 11 instances in which the lives of students, faculty, and first-responders alike were put in jeopardy by someone wielding a gun. 11 separate incidents where victims were killed at the scene, later died in hospital care, or currently nurse bullet wounds that may very well disfigure them for the rest of their lives.

But the guns aren't the problem.

These people would have chosen whatever weapon was at their disposal when they decided to attack. They just so happened to carry a gun, but they were just as likely to choose a knife or an explosive. Arguably, any object can be used as a weapon. So should we ban forks just because they're tipped in pointed prongs? Or maybe construction companies should be forbidden from using hammers and saws to get their work done. And those headphones you're wearing are dangerous because you could one day decide to use the wires to choke someone.

It sounds foolish to think that way, doesn't it? Well, that's because it is. The gun did not formulate any plots to kill or hurt people. That was entirely up to the shooter themselves.

That being said, the power of guns is not what we should be fixated on. What we should be more concerned with are the mental states of the people who are behind all of these tragedies.

Consider Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the shooters responsible for the incident at Columbine High School on April 20th, 1999. Psychoanalysis following their deaths and research into their home lives revealed that these two boys were deeply, deeply disturbed. Both of them craved power; they wanted to let the world know that they were forces to be reckoned with. And they were so mentally-unsettled that they felt the only way they could demonstrate their worth was to show their ability to take other people's lives.

Klebold had boasted about causing an event that resulted in "the most deaths in U.S. history". Hot-headed, yet suicidal and depressed, Klebold's inner turmoil came out in his collaboration with Harris. And Harris was positively delighted in his own destructive tendencies. He taunted the students he gunned down as they lie on the ground in agony; only after he was satisfied with their pain did he kill them.

You cannot tell me that years of studying the boys' journal entries, the blueprints of their minds, and examining their life situations proves that the guns were the masterminds behind this tragedy. Their own psychological defects and lack of substantial mental health treatment are at fault.

The vast majority of Americans have never thought about and will never contemplate seriously hurting or killing another human being. Among this majority, there are many people who own guns for recreational or security use.

There are bad people who have guns, but there are no bad guns who have people.

The firearms are not sentient and are therefore NOT the culprits for these tragedies that have rocked the news these past few weeks.

People do not decide the very instant that they wrap their hands around the barrel of a gun that they want to shoot other people. These desires to cause harm elude to severe cases of psychosis, sociopathy, and other mental illnesses. We should be more proactive about getting care for people we even slightly suspect could be dangerous to themselves and others.

In all of the time that we waste speaking out against gun possession, we could have seen that our nation's children go to therapy appointments. We could have noticed behavioral abnormalities in our friends and family members that could point to a tendency for violence. I simply can't get behind protests against guns when they are just the tools used by the real offenders- the shooters themselves- to destroy innocent lives.

We need to take a good look at these questionable motives that we see in people around us. We need to think long and hard about what their thoughts and actions might mean for everyone else. Please, for the safety of our country, put down your protest signs and raise the right questions here instead.

Ask someone if they need help before the situation can escalate. Ask yourself if you noticed the troublesome signs before they came out in an attack you can't take back.

We shouldn't fear guns. We should fear that they fall into the hands of people who we didn't see as being dangerous until it was too late.