Guns have been an important part of American's life's since before the country was established. Colonial settlers depended on guns for everything from protection against the Native Americans, to hunting for their food. The country was founded because the settlors got tired of England's control on the colonies and the regulation they imposed on their trade. The constitution was written to guarantee freedoms to the new American people, and to make sure that the country would never become all that they resented from England. The founding fathers of America wanted the American people to own guns, and guaranteed that they always could in the constitution. The second amendment of the constitution states "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"(The U.S. constitution.) Today many people just pick out "the right to bear arms" and claim that gun regulations take away their constitutional right. However, a lot has changed since the constitution was originally written back in 1787.  Not everyone thinks of guns the same way that people did 200 years ago. Many people today see guns, as a symbol of violence, and a tool that's primary purpose is to inflict harm on other humans. America has significantly higher rates of homicides involving guns and gun violence crimes than all the other developed countries. Over 100,000 people, in America, each year are shot in murders, assaults, suicides & suicide attempts, unintentional shootings, or by police intervention. 32,000 Americans are killed by, someone using, a gun each year.(the Brady campaign) These statistics include the victims of mass shooting. Mass shooting are not common, but when they do happen they are extremely shocking. Mass shootings have shocked this nation countless times. When a mass shooting is reported on the news people often cant help but feel strong emotions. There is no denying that America has a serious problem with guns. We can all agree that this problem should be fixed, but we start to disagree on how. The pro gun control side's stance is that making guns harder to buy and restricting the types of guns that can be sold would stop mass shootings and reduce the crime rates. However this is not true. Americans gun debate has become mostly ideological in recent years. Americans problem with gun violence should not be fought over ideological differences but rather the true heart of the issue.  An increase in Gun regulations, in general, would not solve the nations gun violence problem.

On January 4th 2016, President Barrack Obama said "The most important thing we can do to prevent gun violence is to make sure those who would commit violent acts cannot get a firearm in the first place" in regards to an executive order on gun control that he had just signed. His executive order requires all vendors of firearms to have to run a full background check on the customer before they can sell them a gun, regardless of where you conduct your business. While background checks do stop guns getting into some wrong hands, it is far from guaranteed to. 

Most of the guns used in mass shootings are acquired in a way that is nearly impossible to prevent.  The four most recent, infamous shootings would not have been affected by the executive order. Adam Lanza, the shooter of sandy hook elementary, did not buy the gun that he used. He used his mother's gun that she legally bought. James Holmes shot up a movie theater filled with innocent people in aurora Colorado. James legally bought the weapon's he used after passing a background check. We now know he was previously undergoing private psychiatric treatment, but that is not something that can be disclosed in a background check.

Dylan Roof passed a background check to buy the gun that he used to attack a church down in Charleston. And in San Berendino, California a 3rd accomplice passed a background check to buy multiple guns, which he gave to the 2 shooters (Siska.) None of these shooters could have been stopped by restrictions on buying guns. There are countless examples of how background checks and making it harder to buy a gun just simply can't stop crimes. 

One approach to fixing our gun violence problem focuses on limiting the types on firearms that are legal to own. This idea is fundamentally wrong because it rests on the belief that certain types of guns are more harmful then others. An assault rifle is no more dangerous than a hunting rifle. Hunting rifles often can shoot at the same rate with an identical caliber as an assault rifle. Assault rifles differ from normal rifles primary because of how they are build. Features of an assault rifle include: a detachable magazine, a collapsible stock, a pistol like grip, and a threaded barrel. In 1994 president Bill Clinton signed into law a ban on the ability to buy assault weapons. The federal ban on assault weapons tried to address the publics concern over gun violence rates and the occurrence of mass shooting. A study over tracking the assault weapons ban's effects over ten years found that there was no proof that the ban did anything to reduce shooting deaths (Koper.) The ban explores many reasons why it had no effect. Citing most obviously that the types of guns that were banned only previously accounted for two percent of all shooting deaths. Handguns also are at the center of the gun regulation debate. The two sides drastically disagree on the effects concealed carrying permits have on crime. Many liberals expected that if more people always had a gun on them then the crime rate would increase. Many conservatives predicted that people would be more likely to intervene and prevent crime if they had a gun, therefore the crime rates would lower. It turns out that neither of their prediction were true. The most rigorous data analyses could not prove a correlation between the number of concealed carrying permits and the number of gun violent crimes (Kristof.)

Making guns harder to buy, and restricting the types of guns that can be sold cant keep guns out of the wrong hands. 

