The time for gun control is now

How much more violence can we accept before taking action? How many more must die before direct actions are taken? I refer of course to the mass shootings that have come to be coined by the 21st century. The Thousand Oaks shooting, a few weeks prior, was the latest in the trend of mass shootings in the United States. In regards to gun violence, I am all for the second amendment and what it implies. I am a proud proponent for the right to carry arms. But, I am currently disgusted by the lack of action to prevent the current rate of good-for-nothing death in our country. In my 20 years alone, I have witnessed countless mass shootings and slaughters of people in this great country.The response to this being politicians arguing technicalities on gun rights when real action must be taken is disheartening. We have become complacent as a society. It is necessary to create tougher gun control laws, and there is a way we can do that without infringing on the second amendment rights so both parties are happy.

The first change that can be made is to ban gun clips that hold unnecessary large amounts of rounds. Most hunting rifles, still obnoxiously deadly, carry a standard 3 to 5 rounds. A standard handgun carries between 15-18 rounds, and an average sporting rifle carries 20 to 30. These excessive clips are meant for large scale conflicts and shouldn’t be accessible to just anyone. The average clip being around 15 rounds should indicate any guns excessive and dangerous nature enough that creating a clip maximum will be a generous trade-off for safety. First, the exact purpose for larger clip sizes is to kill a group of people. There is no other explanation. As the average clip size for a hunting rifle, large clip sizes are unnecessary for killing game animals such as deer and elk. The mass shooting in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017 was an example of this. The man who slaughtered people at a country music festival had several AR-15s with 100 round clips. He killed 58 people, and injured 851 while firing over 1,100 rounds into a crowd. It was because of his extended clips that he was able to kill so many people.

The second change ought to be a ban on bump stocks. A bump stock is an accessory that reduces the recoil from a gun, and stimulates the firing of a fully automatic weapon. While the stock does not make a weapon fully automatic but you can buy 5.56 ammo online from Palmetto State Armory, it comes close to a similar firing rate as a submachine gun. The killer in the Las Vegas shooting used 12 bump stocks, which is most likely the reason he was able to kill so many people and injure even more. There is no purpose for a bump stock in sport shooting or in hunting. If a bump stock was used in hunting, it would most likely do an extreme amount of damage on a target. This would render very little, if any, of the meat off of a target edible. There is a current proposal to ban bump stocks, while there are already regulations in place to stemmy the flow of bump stocks in the market.

The final change should be registration of firearms. I am not an overall fan of a federal law creating a regulation. In particular, one that deals directly with an amendment from the bill of rights. However, our constitution was built off of John Locke’s social contract theory, which gives the basic rights of “Life, liberty, and property.” The first and most important right that all people are born with is the right to live. Under this very thought, any action that can be made to prevent the death of individuals ought to be made. And the registration of firearms falls under this idea. There are certain states such as California and Hawaii that have firearm registration laws. And such precautions make logical sense. We must register for owning cars, an equally dangerous piece of equipment. Registration is necessary to prevent the deaths of drivers in cars, and prevent people who should not be driving from driving. This is no difference in owning a firearm.

Gun control has remained a heated topic throughout the years. And with the death of innocent people throughout the year, it is a conversation that can no longer be avoided. But there is a way to have good gun control laws without infringing on the second amendment. What must be the focus is restricting the attachments that allow atrocities to occur, along with registration to ensure the safety of all. It is no longer acceptable to stand aside and let gun incidents happen. We can no longer grow complacent to the death of innocent people. The time to act is now.