In the past few months, I moved from the united kingdom to the united states of america, and it never ceases to amaze me the constant frequency of all the violent gun crimes happening on such a regular basis. First it was the church shooting in South Carolina, then just a week ago there another shooting in a college campus in Oregon, killing nine in total.

It seems like everytime i turn on the news, there's some sort of report on shootings. So I began to question, why is this?

The UK has some of the toughest gun control laws in the world. If you want to own a gun, it is very difficult to do so. In America as long as you have a licence, which is quite easily obtainable, you can walk out in broad daylight and go purchase a gun. In fact, according to statistics, the US has over 669 times more murders with firearms than the UK. Then i started wondering why should this be? Are American people merely more violent than English? Are there more mental health issues in the United States. Then I began to research other statistics and to my surprise, they were in fact higher than the US. For example, rape levels are twice as more in the UK than the US, drug offences are 327 times more. So obviously this does not mean that people in the UK are less violent, however the matter of the high level of gun crimes in the US remains.
    

I asked a couple of people I know you are in possession of guns why they felt they needed a gun. They responded simply with, to protect myself. Then I asked, well protection from who, to which they would respond, “from people who have guns. Isn’t it ironic? We need to protect ourselves with guns from people who have guns, how much simpler it would be if we just didn’t have them at all. As a civilization, have we not come so far from our caveman ancestors? Do we not have laws and authorities to protect us? Or are we going to continue living so barbarically, carrying weapons killing anything that we feel is a threat to us.
    

As I continued to research, I discovered that in fact, most of the shootings that have occurred in this country, were not even for protection reasons. It was either a family member killing another family member, or a friend killing another friend, purely out of anger, frustration, or just a mental breakdown. Now I’m pretty sure that Americans are not the only people who ever feel angry towards their friends or family, but in other parts of the world, since guns are not so widely available, the most damage they could do is usually break something, or at most punch someone. But here, since guns are always in the house, a simple argument could end up in fatalities. It’s just human nature, when you’re so angry, you don’t think straight. You do something in the spur of the moment that you might regret for the rest of your life.

So what can we do to stop all these shootings? Do we fill up college campuses and every public place, with security, metal detectors and x-ray machines, like an airport, iin order to just feel safe. Could you imagine that the next time you go grocery shopping, you have to go through security first? Is it not easier to just outlaw the selling of guns for good? Obviously the gun manufacturers would lose a large amount of their profits, but truthfully, what’s more important here, the families that have been torn apart because of the horrendous gun crimes, or a billion dollar company losing their profits. People of America need to take a stand for themselves. Stop selling guns, stop killing our kids.