With the presidential debate going on Gun Control has became a commonly spoken about topic in the United States. The opinions on the topic vary through every state based on what the guns have been used for in the state. Like everyone else I have made my own opinion on the topic. Also, I believe that I have a solution to make the law better. Gun Control is intriguing to me because so many people own guns today, but not all of those people are capable of being in possession of a gun. People are so good at hiding mental issues, so it is hard to recognize a person that could change their personality in a split second. Just like it is so easy for someone to hide a mental illness it is easy for a person to own a gun. Some gun owners are unaware of how to control a gun, while others should not own guns because of mental issues. Multiple people today die from gun accidents. Also, numerous people commit suicide or kill people because of mental problems they have. I think that all life is valuable but my family and friends are the most valuable to me. If I were to lose a family member or a friend from a shooting that would be heart breaking, especially if it were by someone who was not capable of owning a gun.  Therefore, gun laws should be stricter to save lives.  My reasoning for this opinion is because the number of innocent lives lost from gun massacres, suicides, and accidents.  We should all value each other's life trying to keep each other alive for as long as possible. Stricter gun laws will limit the amount of deaths from firearms. 

Going off of this, guns have been around in the United States for several centuries. Ever since the first firearm has been created in the 1300's people have felt a since of power from the weapon. Firearms have become one of the most important weapons used because of the advantage they gave countries over less advanced countries. They have provided people with a feeling of safety. A gun can easily make someone feel more powerful than the person who intrudes on him or her. Firearms have created an easier way of taking down the person or animal on the opposite side. During wars guns have protected many Americans but have also killed and severely injured many. The more advance your guns became the more powerful you were in war. The history of the way guns have been used has provided people with this false sense of power, and they feel that guns should be used to take advantage of people. Guns provide people with a since of power that they sometimes notice or sometimes do not. For example if two people were pointing a gun at each other no one is thinking about the how much power they have behind a gun but who can kill who first. The individuals do not recognize that power. Here is a different example of someone recognizing his or her power with a gun. If one person was pointing a gun at an empty handed person it would limit that person's freedom because they do not want to die. Guns have been very beneficial to society when it comes to hunting. People are able to hunt more efficiently and quickly instead of staying out all day to eat one meal with protein.  Guns are not a bad part of society because they really do provide a lot of safety but they also take away a lot of safety if it is in the wrong hands.  All of society is affected by guns, even young children. It so easy for anyone to get their hands on a gun today. Firearms cannot harm anyone in this world without a controller, so guns are not the problem in society it is the people behind them. 

As stated earlier the people behind guns either recognize the power that they are receiving from the gun or do not. Those who recognize their power from the gun are taking away from the freedom of others. These people take advantage of others because many people in society fear losing their life. In the New York Times, Firmin DeBrabander spoke about how citizens with guns limit other's freedom. He left an important quote. "Guns pose a monumental challenge to freedom, and particular, the liberty that is the hallmark of any democracy worthy of the name that is, freedom of speech. Guns do communicate, after all, but in a way that is contrary to free speech aspiration: for, guns chasten speech." This quote supports the thesis, without guns people feel free and that they are in control of their life. If someone were pointing a gun at another individual, then they are not presenting themselves as someone who values another's life. 

People only feel that have freedom of speech when they do not feel they are in danger. Guns have begun to poison power, making people feel more in control of situations. A stricter gun law may not take the poisoned power away but it will save more lives. It is not necessarily a bad thing to be in control of situation unless you are not mentally capable of being in control of a gun. Many American people have made the statement that more guns will make America a safer place. President Obama responds to this statement. 

There is a gun for roughly every man, woman, and child in America. So how can you, with a straight face, make the argument that more guns will make us safer? We know that states with the most gun laws tend to have the fewest gun deaths. So the notion that gun laws don't work, or just will make it harder for law-abiding citizens, and criminals will still get their guns is not borne out by the evidence.

Gun control can be applied to mental illness due to the fact that of all cases related to the unnecessary deaths. It would be hard to diagnose all mental illnesses because of the way people are able to hide them. Also, the people who already own guns with a mental illness have shown that they are good at hiding their mental illnesses, it would be hard to find those who have already purchased their gun and take them away from them. If we were to change the gun law, we could not take guns away from people who have went through the legal process of owning one. People with mental illnesses are more likely to harm themselves and others. If it is proven that more gun laws will cause fewer amounts of gun deaths, then why should we not create more gun laws? Of course you will have those people who find ways to get things illegally. You will all ways run into those people who try to find their way around the law, but why not make it difficult for those people to get ahold to a gun. We could simply make anyone who wants to own a gun take a class, have a background check, and visit a psych doctor. It is not just criminals who society has become worried about getting their hands on a gun, rather people with a mental illness. More than likely a person with a mental illness would be the one to go on a shooting spree killing innocent people. A psychologist named Peter Langman who has studied mass shooters said, "In most cases, there's a long trail leading up to the actual act of violence." Mass murders are mainly people who have been around people that have treated them poorly and damaged them mentally. This is a huge reason of why people should have to go through a process of seeing psychologist before owning a gun. Seeing a psychologist would not hurt anyone, if anything it could save a life or many lives. Society has become selfish when it comes to life, we are truly only worried about if the person harms us but not others or themselves. We make it way to easy for people to get their hands on the most dangerous weapon in the world. 

Since it is so easy for anyone to own a gun we have people who have mental disabilities handling guns and they should not be. If a mentally ill person does not own a gun they probably know where to find one in their house (Rabovsky). On psychologyguide.com writer Ann Steele states that most kids who are bullied in school have been known for stealing their parent's gun and causing massacre at school. Not all school shootings are caused from kids being bullied, some are caused from kids having personality disorders, like anger problems. These kids can easily go from being fine to being mad. According to History website, the Columbine High School massacre that happened in Colorado on April 20, 1999. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were two students of the high school who showed personality change that led to the shooting. The two had tried to steal a van and began making hit list and comments on social media that they want to kill certain people. These two students purchased guns underage from a guy named Mark Manes. It is obvious that these had become two mad best friends. The signs are there that their personalities were changing by getting in trouble with the law. The history website staff has proven that the two were mentally ill.  Sure since this incident happened gun stores become stricter on their Identification policy to purchase a gun. That is not all they should be checking to see if someone is capable of owning a gun. 

Harvard Public Health magazine states that each year more people have committed suicide with a gun rather then someone being murdered by one (Harvard Public Health). In 2010 around 19,000 suicides were committed using a gun and there were about 8,000 less murders with guns (Harvard Public Health). In order to own a gun it should take more than to just be old enough and know how to shoot. Physician Michael Rabovsky M.D. speaks on how he counsels parents with young children. He goes on to talk about people with depression and gun safety (Rabovsky 2016). Physician Rabovsky says, "When I see a depressed patient, suggest that, if he/she owns a gun, perhaps a friend or family member should hold it until they feel better." Many people with depression are known for committing suicide. This is another reason is should be a better process to owning a gun. Someone may just be buying a gun to kill him or herself, or even possibly buying a gun to cause another horrific massacre like the Columbine Massacre. The National Institute of Mental Health says that suicide can come from many mental problems or even a family history of suicide (Harvard Public Health). This is why there should be a mental test you should have to take to own a gun. We do not need to give those with mental illnesses the chance to take their precious life or anyone else's away. 

Federal laws for gun control are weak; states are responsible for adopting their own laws to protect their communities. Some states develop very strong laws and some states have weak laws (Devaney 2016).  In certain states like Louisiana, gun stores do not even check to see if a person owns a gun license, the owner may just check for the person's age. Studies from Boston University published on March 10, 2016 that all types of gun deaths could be reduced at least by 80 percent if states created a minimum of three laws. States that show more restriction towards firearms are less likely to have a high death rate from firearms, and states with less gun restrictions have a higher firearm death rate (Isenstein 2015). Louisiana has one of the highest firearm death rates according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Louisiana is one of the most lenient states when it comes to guns. They have weak gun laws and there are a dominant number of gun owners in the state. In some cases you do not even have to have a gun license to purchase a gun. The state of California has one of the most restricted gun laws in the country.  They have a ten-day waiting period on who may own a firearm or not.  California has one of the lowest firearm death rates out of all states because of their strict gun laws.  It is said that they have had the most strict gun laws in the past two decades.   As you can see stricter gun laws have been beneficial to lowering firearm death rates, so there is no reason why we should not make gun laws stricter to save lives. 

In today's time there are more suicides then homicides that happen by the use of guns. Just by owning a gun increases the probability of someone that lives with you committing suicide with a gun (CBS News 2014). If you know that you have someone in your household with a mental illness you should probably not own a gun whether it is illegally owned or legally owned. Most people who are committing suicide with a gun in homes have legally owned guns. If you do not want to get rid of your gun it would be a good suggestion to purchase a safe for your gun to keep out of reach of those with mental illnesses.

The opposition of my argument have not made bad points of why gun laws should not be any stricter then what they are. The fact that a gun can save many peoples lives makes me believe that guns can keep people safe if placed in the right hands.  Adam Ozimek makes some good points in his article. When we hear about shootings in the news often the guns that were used in the event are stolen. But, just like people are able to buy drugs illegally, they would find away to buy guns illegally. People always find ways around the law. Ozimek's quote speaks about how there is a website where people are now able to purchase guns illegally. 

The Armory began as an offshoot of The Silk Road, notable as the Internet's foremost open drug bazaar ... Now guns, ammo, explosives, and more have their own shadowy home online, far from the piles of Dutch coke and American meth. But the same rules apply: with nothing more than money and a little online savoir faire, you can buy extremely powerful, deadly weapons -- Glocks, Berettas, PPKs, AK-47s, Bushmaster rifles, even a grenade -- in secret, shipped anywhere in the world (Ozimek 2012).

Rather then being victims of gun death people with concealed handguns are more likely to have a sense of safety. In 2001 the National Opinion Research Center did a study on people who said that guns made them feel safer. About 59% of the people who carried guns outside of their homes said it made them feel safer. A woman in the state of Florida said that it hard for women to protect themselves and a gun would allow women to defend their self and kids. To relate to this, there was a recent shooting here in Columbia, South Carolina where a gun saved many lives. A couple of months ago two robbers went into my cousin's barbershop and tried to rob them while women and kids were there. Without a gun many people could have been killed and injured. Luckily one of the barbers owned a gun and was able to shoot one of the robbers and scare the other one away. If guns are used correctly they are capable of saving the person's life using the gun and multiple others. This is why guns should not be unbelievable to purchase but harder then it is now.

In conclusion, no gun can harm a person without someone using it. I believe that stricter gun laws will save a single and multiple people's lives in traumatic situations. One way we could make the gun law stricter and help save lives is by making a customer who wants to purchase a gun see a psychologist. Doing this could help us save that customers life if they psychologist sees that they have a mental problem. The customer could be purchasing the gun to commit suicide or kill others whom have made them angry. Another law to add on to the gun law that I believe would be beneficial is doing background checks on customers. Stricter gun laws could definitely help person before they hurt themselves or someone. The statistics show that states with strict gun laws have lower firearm death rates, so why should not save the lives of people. That being said I would like to end on a quote from Joni Tada, who is a Christian author that makes a remarkable quote of how we should feel about life. She says, "If you truly believe in the value of life, you care about all of the weakest and most vulnerable members of society."  Tada's quote relates back to my argument to making a person see a psychologist before purchasing a gun, by her making the statement about how you should care about another's life during their highs and lows. Going off Tada's quote, I believe that even if you are not a Christian everyone should value life no matter what religion you are.

