As school shootings dominate our 24-hour news cycle, citizens in our nation suddenly find themselves passionate about the safety of our schools' in relation to guns.

Our youth has erupted into a gun pandemic, shouting for assault rifles to be made illegal and for the confiscation of guns from law-abiding citizens. However, the problem lies within our large government, creating policy after policy, tangling up the bureaucracy with red tape.The Parkland tragedy was caused by the ineffectiveness of our bureaucracy. The shooter was mentally ill, yet able to acquire a gun. This wasn't the fault of the policies put in place, but the employees of the bureaucracy not taking their job seriously enough.

One argument used in favor of gun control laws is the assumption that those not in favor of gun control simply do not care about the lives lost in tragedies like Parkland and Sandy Hook. To demonize the other side with feelings rather than looking at the statistics is one of the most common tactics used to pull apart an argument. In the CNN Townhall, Parkland victims told legislators that they "had the children's blood on their hands." It was morally incorrect to blame the NRA, an organization that supports the 2nd Amendment. No, the members of NRA don't have blood on their hands because they didn't pull the trigger.

The NRA backs the 2nd Amendment for self-defense and hunting purposes. Guns have been used to defend homes, which is an important distinction to make when considering gun control laws. Guns are a tool used to kill people. People kill other people using tools. It is not the gun that chooses to shoot a student, but the carrier of the gun. For every school shooter, there are thousands of law-abiding gun owners.

Our second amendment rights help stop crime. When we bring up gun tragedies, no one ever mentions the law-abiding citizen who stopped the Texas church shooter in 2017. On the topic of guns, handguns are used to commit more crimes than AR-15 rifles.

With the shock of Parkland, masses of people crawled out of the woodwork, suddenly coming out as lifelong supporters of gun control. Something I'd like to ask these supporters is where they were when children were getting shot on the streets of Chicago? Or Detroit? Why are the 17 children in Parkland who died by assault rifle more important than the hundreds of lives lost to handguns every year?

Gun control policies would be ineffective due to the culture of freedom surrounding the very grounds America was built on. We should stop blaming the tool and start finding ways to deregulate our system so we can more effectively screen potential gun owners.