Opinion: Why I am pro-gun

The tragic news of the shooting on Oct. 1 in a small town in Southern Oregon that killed nine and injured nine more brought shockwaves across the nation and the world in disbelief that anyone would carelessly murder all those people.

President Obama, along with other officials, saw this as an opportunity to revisit the ever-increasing demand of higher gun control in the United States. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton supports expanding tighter gun control by increasing background checks. Plans that would go against the Second Amendment, the right to bear arms, by making it tougher for normal people to provide the protection they deserve. These proposed gun control measures will not work because taking guns away from good people will make it easier for bad people to kill.

Clinton wants distributors of guns to see all United States citizens as threats where they are unfairly denied the access that they need to protect their families and property.

The United States is one of a few countries that do not ban guns (Czech Republic and Serbia to name a few). In the United Kingdom, a total ban was created on handguns in 1996. Before the ban, the homicide rate rate was 10.9 to 13 homicides per million citizens, according to gunpolicy.org Soon thereafter, the numbers spiked all the way to 18 in 2003 (at it’s peak). The presence of more cops has increased since 2003 to 20,000, and the homicide rate dropped to 11.1 in 2010. Guess what all those cops had on them? NO GUNS TO PROTECT THE LIVES OF THE INNOCENT!

Schools have been a primary target in shootings because they had no protection. Shooters know that “Gun Free Zones” means that no one is capable of stopping them, considering it takes seconds for a shooting to start and it could take the police minutes to get to the school and apprehend the shooter. A great way to solve this is to have all teachers be armed with guns to prevent another shooting. In Israel, despite the ongoing conflict with Palestine, had only 81 total homicides in 2011 according to gunpolicy.org. Israel is where militants and normal citizens have collections of guns and yet there were only 81 deaths. In the United States, there were 11,068 homicides due to unprotected citizens in 2011. These deaths were due to the fact that people are unarmed and have no ways of defending themselves in life or death situations.

We spend tax dollars to have Barack Obama and his family have the most top notch security force ever while normal citizens are denied their right to protection by owning a firearm. No person’s life is worth more than someone else and if someone were to threaten your right to live then protection should be allowed to defend yourself.

Gun control advocates often state the phrase “guns kill.” Well if that’s true, lets try putting a gun on a table and ask it to kill someone. Oh wait, that’s right. It’s just an inanimate object. It can’t do anything without someone to pull the trigger. If you want fewer school shootings, have better resources available for people to get the treatment that they are in need. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers responsible for shooting and killing 13 people in Columbine High School in 1999, were subjects of bullying for years. In addition to people like Adam Lanza, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter, and Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, all of these perpetrators had mental issues at the time of their respective massacres.

People are going to keep finding ways to get guns, and those who follow the law will not be able to protect themselves at critical moments.