December 14, 2012 was by far one of the most infamous days in the history of The United States. Unfortunately, it hit really close to home for me. I was a freshman in Brookfield High School and I had just taken out my homework for Spanish class when my principal, Mr. Palumbo, announced over the PA, “We are in lockdown, do not leave your classroom.” No one thought anything of it until people went on twitter and received calls from their parents. I went on twitter and saw a headline of a CNN tweet, “School shooting in Newtown”. Newtown, I thought, that is the town next to me. Brookfield and the surrounding community had always been an incredibly safe area with crime rates microscopically low, so there was no way there was a school shooting happened in Newtown. About half an hour later, Mr. Palumbo walked into the classroom with an extraordinarily somber look on his face as if he was on the brink of tears. He explained to us how a deranged man walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and murdered several students and teachers. The entire class gasped and could not comprehend what had just happened only ten minutes away from where we were sitting. As time went on, gruesome details began to emerge. Twenty six people were dead including twenty children, the principal, a school psychiatrist, and four teachers. Twenty innocent first graders with their entire lives ahead of them were brutally murdered. I was furious; how can such an incredibly tragic and devastating attack happen so close to home?

 This is the United States of America in the 21st century and yet, our laws allow horrible mass shootings like Sandy Hook to happen at a much too frequent rate. Columbine High School, Aurora movie theater, Tucson Walmart, a Wisconsin Temple, a non for profit organization in San Bernadino, and most recently, an airport in Ft. Lauderdale. All of these locations were those of mass murder brought on by deranged killers with automatic assault rifles. Mass shootings where, “four or more people are killed or injured by gunfire”, have almost become expected in this country as it feels like one happens every couple months (Hunter). They are made possible because of poor legislation and flawed gun laws. Guns are a privilege granted by the Constitution where Americans have the undeniable right to own a gun. However, time and time again Americans have abused this right, and guns have fallen into the wrong hands. A new stance needs to be taken on guns and we need to regulate the system with stricter laws to ensure that tragedies like Sandy Hook and other mass shootings never happen again. The current federal background check system, The National Instant Background Check System, is outdated, and new legislation is needed to prevent guns from getting in the wrong hands. Additionally, the need for semi automatic and automatic firearms in America is trivial. These types of weapons should be banned from the general public. It is time to change the legislation in this country so that mass shootings can become stories of the past instead of being news of the present.

The law of the land when it comes to background checks is The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The NICS was put into place in 1998 and requires everyone who buys a firearm from a federally licensed gun dealer (FFL) to go through a full background check. Although the NICS has the right idea in mind when performing background checks, there are multiple flaws within the system that need to be addressed. Whenever someone goes through an FFL to buy a gun, the first step is to fill out a sixteen question questionnaire before it gets submitted to the  FBI through the NICS (Smith). This questionnaire looks into the customer's drug, medical, and criminal history.  This step is completely irrelevant to a thorough background check for many reasons. It is not hard to decipher which answers will get you a gun and which answers will warrant suspicion. Anyone can easily lie on this questionnaire and put the “right” answers down just so that they are able to purchase a firearm. The gun shop owner then contacts the NICS with your answers and the customer's social security number. The NICS runs the social security number and looks for warning signs in the person's history such as criminal and mental health history, dishonorable military discharges, immigration status, whether someone is under indictment, and drug use (Smith). These measures are great because of their in-depth investigation into an individual’s past that ensures the firearm being purchased will be used responsibly, and need to continue to be implemented in all background checks. The FBI gets information on those categories from a variety of databases including The Interstate Database Index, the National Crime Information Center, the NICS Index, as well as medical records submitted by each state. Once again, this is a solid group of databases where the NICS is doing its job trying to prevent unsafe gun ownership. So everything seems great, however all is not how it looks to be. The big problem that undermines the entire system comes from the federal government’s laws and databases set up through the NICS. Federal law mandates that state and local police are not required to send in criminal records to the FBI. This is a massive flaw in the effecting the whole system. That means an individual could go on a mass robbery spree, get caught and incarcerated for a period of time, be released and it is all very possible that the FBI has no idea. If the state police decided not to submit that data to the FBI, that individual could walk into a gun shop and legally purchase a gun within days of his release. 

There are a couple of reasons why police may withhold information from the FBI. The practices of local departments are different where usually the smaller the town, the worse off the record keeping is because of an underfunded and undermanned police department. “Unpopulated areas allocate most their funds toward businesses that keep the town afloat rather than their law enforcement thus creating many issues of keeping records for long amounts of time” (United States Government Accounting Office).  Additionally, many states cite privacy laws to protect the rights of their residents, or even politics as a reason for withholding information (Smith). Not only are criminal backgrounds not required to be turned into the FBI, but neither are medical records. States and hospitals have the right to withhold medical records from the FBI citing the same privacy laws as those withholding the criminal records (Smith). This is a huge problem that allows too many individuals to clear background checks with ease because important personal history was not submitted to the FBI due to faulty law.

Another huge issue that needs to be discussed when it comes to mass murders and gun safety is the topic of assault rifles. I challenge anyone reading this essay to give me one rational and reasonable explanation why the general public needs access to buy assault rifles. Assault rifles are illegal in hunting and in sport, so those reasons are ruled out (Vogel). All one needs to protect themselves from harm is a handgun as it is excessive to keep an automatic weapon for protection. The only realistic use of an assault rifle is to kill people, as used in war. Even gun fanatics rabidly defending them won't say they need assault rifles, they merely want them. People simply do not need guns that can fire off a ton of rounds for the sake of reckless enjoyment. It has become a luxury, one that needs to be critically assessed for a determination if we should still have it or have lost our right to. In today's day and age, it is clear that we lost this luxury. Columbine to Aurora, Tucson to San Bernardino, Sandy Hook to Ft. Lauderdale, assault rifles have done nothing but bring pain to millions and millions of people and families. A permanent ban on assault rifles would certainly affect a lot. Even in the case of a horrible mass shooting, the damage would be far less immense because of the lack of rounds that the shooter would have, increased reloading time, and an increase in the need for accuracy (Gross). The murder weapon that Adam Lanza used during the Sandy Hook shooting was a fully automatic Bushmaster XM15-E2S. This weapon has the capability of firing off 45 rounds per minute while each magazine holds 30 bullets. Lanza walked into a classroom and unloaded his bushmaster swinging it back and forth with very little aim, rather, blindly aimed at the masses (Vogel). A ban on assault rifles would have prevented Lanza’s mom from having any automatic firearm in the house, meaning far less casualties would have occurred on that horrible day. 

The most important reason why people buy guns is for personal safety. If someone is so unconfident with their shot with a handgun that they feel the need to buy an assault rifle, they should go to a shooting range and learn. There is no situation where a handgun would not stop an intruder where an automatic weapon would. The argument for assault rifles in the general public should not be an argument at all. It is just common sense, every member of the general public has no need for owning an assault rifle, no exceptions period. 

Like any right, an individual needs to earn it and prove responsibility with that privilege. Should an individual abuse that privilege or prove that they cannot handle it responsibly, the right could be at risk of being taken away. Felons chose to be felons, so therefore they lose their second amendment right. Giving a felon a gun after said individual committed such a heinous act is just wrong and puts the safety of the general public at risk. As for people with certain severe mental handicaps, unfortunately natural selection took its course and those individuals are not responsible enough to own a firearm. Yes they are still American and yes they are still equal citizens under the law, but sometimes they cannot comprehend the repercussions of committing gun violence or even why it is a bad thing at all.

"If you can't manage your own personal affairs independently, how can we expect that you're going to be a responsible steward of a dangerous, lethal firearm” (Hunter). Giving someone who does not know the full responsibilities of owning a gun is just like giving a five year old a driver's license or making a bartender the President of the United States. It just plain and simply will not have a good outcome. The shooters in Sandy Hook, Aurora, San Bernardino, Wisconsin, Charleston, and among many other instances had been diagnosed with one or more mental illnesses before committing their horrible act (Vogel). For these reasons, gun control and gun regulation is necessary to ensure the safety of the citizens of this great country. 

Gun Control as related to mass killings is obviously an extremely controversial and divisive issue with virtually every person having a unique solution to the issues that guns pose. It would just be wrong to write an essay on why gun control is necessary without addressing both the extreme right and left viewpoints.

 On the conservative side, many Americans believe that gun control is actually the problem and that no gun control would solve many of the gun violence issues going on in this country. In reality, a system without gun regulation just would not even be plausible. Should America get rid of background checks altogether, gun violence and mass murders would undeniably increase (Marcotte). This would allow convicted felons and people with severe mental handicaps to buy guns. After seeing the devastating effects of these people obtaining guns in the past, what sense would it make for these individuals to just have easier access to guns in the future? Many of those same people believe that gun control and the NICS breaks Americans second amendment rights as well. Gun control only regulates America’s second amendment, it does not ignore it or infringe upon it. The founders of our country included the second amendment in the Constitution so that the citizens had means to stand up to the federal government if it became too powerful and a tyranny (Bae). Gun regulation does not prevent citizens from having self defense from the government turning against them. This was a great idea and provision for the time when both the federal government and the states were new, untested, and potentially dangerous concepts. Now however, this system has been proven to work over a span of hundreds of years and there are bigger threats involving firearms that need to be addressed than the government taking a 180 degree turn and becoming dangerous. 

Meanwhile, On the far left side of the spectrum, people believe that this country needs to be stripped of guns all together (Marcotte). To get straight to the point, this idea just would not work and cause more harm than bad. It is impossible to believe that every single gun could be removed from every single home in this country. An operation to that extent to rid every house of a gun would just anger millions of Americans, as homes would be stripped from top to bottom by federal employees looking for firearms. Additionally, the right to own a gun is protected under the second amendment of the Constitution of the United States. The founding fathers made the Constitution over 230 years ago and this country is still going strong based on those original beliefs. The founding fathers included that amendment so that in the case of the government becoming a tyranny, the general public would have a self defense mechanism. Considering that America is a country that was created after originally being included in a system of tyranny, that is a good reason to keep firearms legal. Also, large numbers of citizens would like to own a gun for their peace of mind and well being as many people feel the need to own a firearm for self protection (Hamblin). The biggest reason why taking away guns from everyone would not work is because the bad people would still find ways to acquire them. If someone has that strong of a desire to commit a mass shooting, they will find a way to get a gun. Just like any illegal drug, there will always be a black market and perpetrators will always find a way. So now the people who want guns for self protection are not able to acquire them, and the bad guys will still be able to get guns with relatively little difficulty. It should now be remarkably clear how taking away everyone’s guns is not only implausible and wrong, it is un-American.

The obvious solution in this situation to make mass murders and gun violence a thing of the past is to change federal law. It should be illegal for states or local departments to withhold any crucial and important information from the FBI, this includes all medical information and criminal records. Making this mandatory would immediately increase the amount of information that the FBI has to make their decision on who can and cannot purchase a firearm. This will also prevent certain individuals from slipping through the cracks just because of the system. Any and all criminal and medical records need to be reported directly to the FBI for the sake of the protection of American citizens. Should these measures not be met, the FBI must be on top of gun shops making sure no one who is not completely cleared acquires a gun. Additionally, it is hard to believe automatic and semi automatic assault rifles are still allowed in the general public. A permanent ban on the sale of these types of weapons to the general needs to be passed by Congress immediately, no exceptions. This will decrease the amount of mass killings in America ten fold (Bae). Even if a mass murder were to happen, the inability to have an assault rifle will greatly reduce the severity and amount of casualties in such a tragedy due to the lack of bullets, increase in need of effective accuracy, and more time spent reloading. Legislation also needs to be passed that prevents certain individuals from purchasing firearms. These individuals include convicted felons and people with diagnosed severe mental and social problems. These citizens should be prevented by federal law from purchasing a firearm because of either their bad history handling guns or the fact that they cannot fully understand the responsibilities and repercussions of using a firearm. America has been sitting around for years watching tragedy after tragedy while politicians have decided to barely touch gun laws the entire time. It is time to change the legislation in this country so that mass killings can become a thing of history.
