On Friday, another school shooting occurred at Marysville Pilchuck High School in Washington. The shooter was a freshman. He killed his female classmate and critically wounded his cousins. In the end, he killed himself. The gun that he used was legally owned.  How did he get the gun? Why did he bring the gun to school? How did he bypass the school security? This is just one of many examples of the ugly reality of lax gun regulations in America. It is a reality where guns can be bought legally, but horribly misused. It is reality where we are willfully blind to the fact that our guns are our childrens’ guns. It is a reality where the solution to this dilemma is to buy more guns. The fact is, we desperately need stricter gun control laws and practices that greatly reduce the chances of guns being used irresponsibly.

The Second Amendment is one of the most basic rights granted to the American citizens by the Constitution. "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" (U.S. Const. amend. II). People are familiar with the “rights to bear arms” idea expressed in the amendment, but they fail to also consider the “well regulated militia” section as well. With so many guns in America, children can easily get them and there is no stopping them from causing accidents. People with mental issues can easily get a variety of the extremely dangerous guns in the legal market and there is no effective regulations to stop them.

Buying a gun in the United States is too easy. In America, guns can be bought from two legal sources; one of them being from dealers and the other being from private sellers. When someone gets a gun from a dealer, background checks, ID, and sale records are required. However, if guns are bought from a private seller, no background checks or sale records are required. For the right amount of money, anyone can bypass all the regulations and obtain such deadly weapons. These include people with mental issues, violent people, and criminals.  The fact is, even with background checks, the people with mental issues still will not have a hard time getting a gun. This is because there are just too many loopholes in the system. For example, Dexter Nelson, an Oklahoma City police captain said, “. . .what could (the retailers) do if a person passes a background check? They don't have the authority to check if he's lying. We as law enforcement don't even have that ability, because mental health records are kept in each separate jurisdiction in Oklahoma. Those files aren't transferred to a central state or federal system we can check”  (Christensen). This flaw in the system is why we are having such a hard time controlling gun violence. If we want to stop gun violence, would it not be more logical to fix this faulty loophole first? It is understandable that it is not the person’s fault if he is mentally ill, but it is common sense that this person should not be able to have access to such a dangerous weapon.

There is no doubt that guns are dangerous and should be handled with great care. With that being said, it is getting increasingly harder to express that message, especially to children. Because there are countless guns out there in America, they can easily get into the hands of children. In fact, studies by the federal government have stated that 8% of the unintentional shootings are caused by children of six (“Statistics On Gun Deaths & Injuries”). There are currently about 316 million people living in America. This means that 25.3 million children have gotten their hands on guns and accidentally wounded someone. 23.5 million is a terrifying amount of children with access to guns. There are too many examples of students bringing guns from home and killing people with them. To these children, guns are just a tool for revenge. In their state of mind, they do not think about the true consequences of abusing guns. Often, a student will commit suicide, like the shooter at Washington State high school. If a student can sneak a gun to school, should it not be a alert sign for stricter regulation? Aside from the laws when buying guns, there are virtually no laws to regulate the responsible use of these guns, and that is why it is very hard to stop children from accessing guns with tragic results. It is absolutely necessary to impose regulations to protect children from harming themselves and others.
Opponents of this argument might say that because criminals will always find ways to
get guns, we need our guns to be able to protect our family and ourselves from harm. Gun control laws will make us defenseless against criminals with guns. However, the aim of gun control laws is not to take away anyone’s guns. The objective of these laws is make sure that people are not abusing the right to bear arms. There is absolutely no reason why citizens should be owning assault rifles or automatic guns. Likewise, in Stephen King’s essay, Guns, he comments,“If you can't kill a home invader (or your wife, up in the middle of the night to get a snack from the fridge) with ten shots, you need to go back to the local shooting range.” (Minzesheimer) You do not need multiple guns and twenty bullets in order to defend yourself from criminals. Just because gun control laws may not be perfect, it does not mean we should not have them. Gun control laws are starting points in the progress of making our country safer while not infringing upon people’s rights.
Another reason the opposition might come up with is that gun control laws in its very essences violates our second amendment. Going back to what was stated earlier, people do have the rights to own guns, but they must be “well regulated.” The sole purpose of the Second Amendment is for self preservation. If gun control laws do not exist, no one will be able to enforce the second amendment fully and guns will most certainly be abused. That is why gun control laws do not violate the Second Amendment, but in fact help create a safe environment to have guns.

Lastly, some people think that in case another government or even our own government invades us, guns will give them some sort of protection. While that may be true during the time when the founding fathers wrote this amendment, today, it is just wishful thinking. Governments have access to nuclear weapons and other  highly dangerous weapons. If they were to unleash those weapons on the people of America, guns would not do much. 
A gun is a double-edged sword. There will always be criminals out there abusing the right to have guns. However, American citizens have a duty to show that guns can be also used correctly too. We are not asking people to give up their guns or their rights. We need tighter background checks and responsible storage practices to keep guns from being misused.What we are asking is for the cooperation in order to keep the children, our people, and our nation safe. With the ever increasing amount of victims to gun violence, we cannot afford to do any less.

Work Cited
Anderson, Kelli. "Ease of Access." Kelli Anderson RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.
Christensen, Jen. "How the Violent Mentally Ill Can Buy Guns." CNN. Cable News Network, 05 Feb. 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.
Minzesheimer, Bob. "Gun Owner Stephen King Adds Voice to Gun-control Debate." USA Today. Gannett, 25 Jan. 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2014.
"Statistics on Gun Deaths & Injuries." Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 25 Oct. 2014.
U.S. Constitution. Amend. II