In the past few years, it seems like way too often the nightly news comes on to announce another tragedy has occurred. Way too often it seems these tragedies are centered around a violent individual, or group, who has abused the deadly power of firearms to harm others. So now that we find ourselves here, we ask the question; "how did we get here?" How did we let our society reach a point where people are afraid to go to the movies or send their kids to school? Instead of focusing on how we got here, we should be asking ourselves "where do we go from here?" The only effective solution to the gun violence problem of today is for there to be an increased population of licensed armed responsible citizens to combat those who wish to carry out evil no matter the cost.

The reason the past few years have seemed more violent is because they have been. According to a CNN article on mass shootings in the U.S., two of the top five deadliest mass shootings in U.S. history have happened in the last 10 years. In fact, those two are the top two deadliest out of the five. In 2012, on December 14th, Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook elementary school and killed 20 children and 6 staff members before turning the gun on himself (CNN). This gun, purchased legally by his mother, was then stolen by Adam after he killed her. This example ranks second out of the top five most deadly (CNN). The other came in 2007 on April 16th when Seung-Hui Cho, a student, marched into Virginia Tech and killed 32 people before turning the gun on himself (CNN). This incident sparked then President George W. Bush to pass a law strengthening the NICS background check system, the only major gun law passed since 1994 (CNN). 

Out of the top five, the other three range from 1991 all the way back to 1966. On October 16, 1991, George Hennard crashed his pickup through the wall of a local Texas restaurant and proceeded to shoot 23 inside (CNN). On July 18th, 1984. James Huberty killed 21 people at a local California McDonalds after being denied mental help because he was deemed not critical by a mental help hotline (CNN). Next, out of the top five most deadly, is the oldest, and it came in 1966. On August 1st, Joseph Whitman kills 16 people from a tower on the campus of Texas University (CNN). Whitman was a former marine, and obtained his gun legally. Few events get the same national attention that tragedies like these do. According to a paper written by John R. Lott Jr. and William M. Landes, it is because of this flood of attention that occurs after "multiple shooting incidents [that] may have helped pave the way for passage of concealed handgun laws permitting law abiding citizens to carry" (Lott and Landes).

One thing that all of these examples have in common is the lack of any resistance to the shooter until the police arrive. This is not by coincidence because all of the shooters chose locations where they knew unarmed people would be. Three out of five polled felons say that they wont mess with an armed victim (AGF). These places weren't random. As a result, two schools of thought have arisen to solve the gun violence issue. One is more gun regulation, which is favored by President Obama. Now, on the surface this makes sense, right? Make guns harder to obtain to everyone. This seems simple enough because if there are more obstacles to gun ownership then the bad guys wont be able to get guns. Well, the world isn't that simple, sadly. There is no such thing as good guys and bad guys. What if a good guy goes through all the background checks, passes, and then something happens in his life? What if he develops a mental problem? President Obama wants there to be statements released on the mental status of perspective gun buyers. However, the problem with this is that experts insist that "the move would only stigmatize mental illness for little gain" (New Scientist). Hilary Clinton is right on board the Obama train, however, saying in addition if Congress wont do it, "she will try to broaden the background check requirement through an executive order" (Clinton). Seriously, is this the precedent we want to set? If Congress and the people don't want it, just let the president make a ruling like a king? America was ruled by a monarch once, but as history recalls, it didn't work out too well for him. 

These are reasons to believe that anyone who thinks the solution is more gun control, is actually wanting to ban guns all together: "I used to refer to my position on this issue as being in favor of gun control ... except that gun control was still too tentative" (Bovy). Now this is a great solution to many people, but other than the fact that this is utterly unconstitutional, this option not exactly feasible. First, lets deal with the constitutional aspect. In a podcast video by Stephen Corwder, he refers to another video claiming the second amendment does not in fact give citizens the right to own guns. Crowder says that his counterpart's interpretation of the second amendment is flawed, due to his own admission. His counterpart points out the actual sentence structure and punctuation of the amendment. He says that due to the second comma in the sentence, the whole sentence is referring to the rights of a militia to bear arms. Crowder points out, using the same idea, that actually the second comma is ending an appositive clause, as well as continuing a list of elements in series (i.e. militia, the people, etc). Crowder argues that actually due to sentence structure of the constitution, it does in fact give the people the right to keep and bear arms. Our founding fathers were not dumb. They put that amendment in there because they truly believed it to be vital to the security and protection of this nation and its citizens. Not surprisingly, they were right too because "Nations with strict gun control laws have substantially higher murder rates than those who do not in general" (AGF). For example, "the 9 European nations with the lowest gun ownership rate have a combined murder rate 3x that of the 9 European nations with the highest gun ownership rate" (AGF). The founding fathers did not take the issue of gun control lightly because they didn't want to repeat this European model where an armed government controlled unarmed citizens (Second Amendment Gun Rights).

Now that that is settled, lets move to the feasibility of the idea. One reason for this idea not to work is the problem of all the existing guns in American hands. None of these guns are easily trackable, in fact most are unregistered. Currently there are over 270 million civilian firearms in U.S. households (AGF). Proponents of a gun ban don't exactly have a solution to this issue. This doesn't even take into account the number of illegal weapons being smuggled across the Mexico-U.S. border as we speak, oh and not to mention that most of these smuggled weapons are fully automatic ones that are already illegal. Needless to say, the criminals don't care about the law, and thus is why they are criminals. Now, fully automatic weapons have been illegal for quite some time. Every reasonable American understands that no one needs a machine gun, bazooka, or etc. However, proponents of banning guns are using vocabulary to confuse the average everyday voter who knows little to nothing about guns. "Assault Weapon Truth" aims to clear up the confusion when it comes to the language used by the media and those fighting over gun control. As defined by the Associated Press Stylebook, an assault rifle is "is a military term referring to a medium-caliber, shoulder-fired rifle that allows the shooter to select between semiautomatic mode and either fully automatic or three-shot-burst mode" (AWT). The media, however, likes to use both the term "assault rifle" and "assault weapon" as if they mean the same thing. This is untrue. There is no real definition of what an "assault weapon" is and therefore leads to all the confusion. They are trying to get voters to vote for an assault weapons ban by leading them to picture a machine gun, which is already illegal, when in reality this law could theoretically ban any type of gun if passed. Who's to say an average hunting rifle is now to be considered an "assault weapon" and is now therefor banned? This kind of language manipulation is not only devious and dishonest, but its dangerous too. Also, a gun ban will only prevent law abiding citizens from obtaining guns. After all, they are law abiding, so why does it matter if they have a gun? Its already a law not to shoot someone, but people do it anyway. What's another law to those who break the existing ones? Also, guns are used over 80x more every year in self defense than in all homicides, accidents, and suicides combined! (AGF). As a principle, gun control is meant to keep guns away from those who will abuse them, not law abiding citizens.

The other school of thought has to do with arming these law abiding citizens through the implementation of concealed carry weapons permits. As it stands, permits are on the rise, and for good reason. Think about if in each of the five most deadly mass shootings mentioned earlier there was at least one citizen with a concealed weapon who was trained to use it. This could've changed each example and without a doubt saved countless lives. Mass murderers are far less effective when someone shoots back at them. In fact, according to AGF, the average death rate of a shooting rampage stopped by an armed citizen is 2.3 (AGF). This is compared to the average death rate of a shooting rampage stopped by police, which is 14.3 (AGF). This means that if in all five of the shootings mentioned above there was only one person armed at the scene, over 100 lives could have been saved. Along with these alarming statistics, AGF also points out that armed citizens have a 2% error rate, compared to the police with an 11% error rate (AGF). All of the recent police brutality instances prove that cops aren't perfect. Honestly, no one is, and with only a little under 800,000 police officers in the U.S., that's a lot of ground to cover for not enough cops (AGF). However, there are 100x more gun owning citizens than cops (AGF). If they were all responsible, licensed carrying citizens, then the area being covered would increase 100x, with a lower error rate mind you. As it stands now, citizens defend themselves and kill almost 3x as many criminals than cops do each year (AGF). While on this subject, increased responsible gun ownership not only reduces gun violence, but it reduces all other crime in general. For example, Kennesaw Georgia passed a law in 1982 "requiring heads of households to keep at least one firearm in the house" (AGF). As a result, the residential burglary rate dropped 89% in Kennesaw, compared to only 10% in the rest of the state (AGF). The facts speak for themselves. In every instance the increase in responsible gun ownership reduces overall crime. For example, over 200,000 times a year women use guns to defend against sexual assault (AGF). What will these women do if an all out ban on guns occurs? They aren't waiting on an answer to that question. In fact, the growth rate for women obtaining concealed weapon permits is growing "2x that of men" according to CPRC. Women are realizing that the most effective way to prevent attacks or stop them is to be armed. Citizens have the right to defend themselves, and that right is stated in the Constitution under the second Amendment.

Given all this information, where should America go from here? That's the most important question, and it needs to be taken seriously. This year is an election year, and the outcome of this election can very well determine the fate of gun ownership in America. The voting public needs to educate themselves on the facts and look at the evidence because if they do, they will see what the correct answer is. America and its government needs to promote firearm safety, bring back instructional classes in schools on proper shooting techniques, and general safety precautions. We need to teach kids how to respect firearms and their deadly power, not make them afraid of them. Also, the incentive and availability of concealed weapon classes (CWP) needs to be increased because a responsibly armed population is the key to cracking down on not only gun violence, but crime in general. In the meantime, two men are doing something to move toward this goal of a responsibly armed population with the creation of their website.  "Handgunlaw.us" is a website owned by Steve Aikens and Gary Slider that lists all 50 US states and their gun laws and regulations, so that people are informed about what their state's gun laws are, rather than getting confused by political rhetoric. Their mission statement is "We firmly believe in the Second Amendment, Concealed Carry and the fact that we have both a right and responsibility to take a pro-active position in our personal defense. Unfortunately, we recognize there are so many variances in our state to state laws, the average individual may have difficulty keeping up with those laws well enough to prevent them from breaking the law, especially as they travel. Since we have the ability to research those laws and create an informative Concealed Carry specific site, we have done so" (Aikens and Slider).

As a result of efforts like "Handgunlaw.us" and others, the number of CWP holders as gone up 15.4% over the last eight years (CPRC). "The Rise of Concealed Carry" is an interview with the president of the Crime Prevention Research Center about the reason for the increase in gun purchases, ownership, and concealed carry permits since Obama's election. A reason given for this is the national attention given to guns because of the mass shootings. Americans don't feel safe anymore, and aren't looking to others for protection. As a people, Americans are relying on themselves for protection. For example, it is widely known that the inner parts on most major U.S. cities are typically very poor and violent, and they have a large minority population. Well, as a result, their police forces are typically very overwhelmed: "if you look at Police Chief James Craig in Detroit or Sheriff David Clark in Milwaukee, these are just examples of leading black law enforcement saying, 'Look, we can't protect you, we're having budget cuts. We're having to cut the police forces that we have, and they've been strongly recommending that people in the heavily black areas that they represent have to be able to depend upon themselves for safety.'" (CPRC).

Recently, there was a study published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy which concluded "there is a negative correlation between gun ownership and violent crime in countries internationally (more guns= less crime)" (AGF). This is all the proof that anyone should need as to what the answer is to the gun violence problem. The only effective solution to the gun violence problem of today is for there to be an increased population of licensed armed responsible citizens. These citizens will not only be able to protect themselves, but they will also serve to protect the public around them. They will also cause crime to go down in general because criminals wont know who has a gun and who doesn't, thus prompting them to refrain from criminal activities due to the fear of encountering an armed citizen. When it comes to personal safety, and the safety of communities across the U.S., it is up to the average citizen to defend themselves because after all, "the average response time of a 911 call is 23 minutes; the response time of a .357 is 1400 feet per second" (Anonymous). 

