Throughout the course of the week I feel like the only emotion I can get from myself is when I hear something about what is going on in the world, so although I've had articles planned to write about things that make me happy like working out, getting into relationships, shopping, and my family visiting, I want to write about something a little more serious, and it's not even necessarily my political views, but it is more about how I have gained the awareness to feel this way. Hearing about the events in America and all around the world recently have made my heart heavy and disappointed in humanity. I've seen countless articles, photographs and videos of protesting crowds, violence, police shootings and terrorist attacks everywhere. Although these things are happening all over the world, I see a majority of them happening in the United States.

One day I became fed up with my undying sadness for the world, I decided to turn to social media like I always do to write my feelings out. The tweet was simple and not specific, "I hate guns." I knew that there was probably a response to come, and surely enough I got a response saying, "So if I set a gun on the ground, it'll shoot everybody in sight?" It's funny, because I didn't say what bothered me about guns, I didn't say we shouldn't have guns, I didn't even specify that they were a problem. I could have hated the color or the sound they make, but by this person responding, despite the fact that they are obviously pro-guns, they know that there is a problem. They have a fight prepared for someone who isn't even arguing.

I could have fought back and said no, if the gun, that's sole purpose in life is to viciously rip flesh to the point of death, was going to sit on the ground and not hurt anybody. But that's not the point of a gun--no one sets it on the ground. They hold them in their hands, and they shoot at people, at animals, in large crowds, at our own heads. But instead of arguing I decided to write. People all around agree that there is a gun problem, yet the second amendment holds so much power and meaning for the people of America. The truth is America was a different place then––we've out grown our old rules. The right to bear arms then was before America was able to mass produce weapons so that we had enough for every man, woman, and child in America to own one. It was before automatic weapons, and before we had 327 mass shootings in 2015 alone. It's a scary place now.

When proposing that America needs to change with the times, I'd like to let it be known, that I feel like Americans should keep their gun rights in some way, shape, or form, but politicians need to put effort in thinking creatively about the situation. We don't need military weaponry. We don't need machines that can kill 10 people every minute. We should mimic what other countries like Australia, Israel and the U.K. have done to stop the gun violence from hurting their citizens just like it has been destroying the lives of many Americans.

There is so much controversy when it comes to gun rights because it is a right of Americans, and people want to feel protected, yet I can't help but feel panicked in sight of a gun. I can't trust people with them. People like to blame people when it comes to gun violence and that is true, people do kill people, but they use a gun to do it, and the only logical explanation in my head to stop the killing is to take away what is actually doing the killing. Most people refute this argument by saying that if you take away a gun, people will use other things, like knives or they will physically harm who they want to kill. This is true––we can't stop the violence from happening, but if we do the research, we see that when gun rights were taken away in these other countries, the amount of overall deaths that occurred per year due to homicide, mass killings, and assault, were still nowhere near what they used to be when guns were still in the picture.

Honestly, there is a serious problem that can't be contained by background checks, mental health screenings or permits, because we've tried them, and the human flaw in all of this mess is so much greater than anything that we can control. I've stated in other articles that Americans will never think the same because we are a species of such a unique and individualized thought process. We could say that someone doesn't have a mental illness based on everything we know, yet that same person thinks its okay to shoot a police officer, or children in a school, or themselves. I'm sorry if this is too graphic, but this is the America that we are refusing to change. What I'm saying is we need to give it a try. We need to stop putting in excuses for the acts of violence when the only excuse is that you gave them a machine made to kill and said it's your right.

I hope you can take this article for what it is worth, and understand that there are people out there who want to feel protected too, and that will be done when I can wake up without a news update of another mass shooting, or a police officer being shot, a black man gunned down, an unstable boy firing at a crowd, and so many other scenarios that I know you have a headline running through your mind of a day that you lost hope in humanity, just like I have. I hope you can understand that your opinion and your belief is not the only thing that should matter. I hope you can see that for all the lives America has lost, there is a reason, and that reason can be stopped, easily. I hope you can open your mind to see a possibility of Americans not completely losing their rights to guns, yet there still being a safe alternative without automatic weapons. I hope you now see why I hate guns.