There's the James Holmes shooting, then the Sandy Hook shooting, and then the Washington Navy Yard shooting, all of them happened in a short time span. Anti-gun control groups claim they seldom happen, and yet, year after year, they happen again and again. These shootings can be prevented if there is gun control. We need to make guns hard to obtain and maintain. Rigorous background checks and constant mental-health tests are just a few of the methods that could do this.
The Second Amendment says, “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.” (US Const. amend. XII, sec. 3) However, now too many people have guns in the U.S, and most of the people who have them aren’t “well regulated Militia”.
In 28 states, open carry (carrying a gun that is publicly visible) is legal without restrictions. Gun control activists want to ban people from publicly carrying around a gun, but doing so would prove to do more harm then good.
According to criminologist Gary Kleck, “92 percent of criminal attacks are deterred when a gun is merely shown”. This means that criminals won’t target armed people, and that carrying around a gun in public almost guarantees your safety against other criminals who have guns. So doesn’t that mean that the U.S should have everyone carry around a gun? Not really.

Many people are under the false notion that more guns equal less violence. Studies show that this is an invalid claim. In fact, more guns equaled more violence.

The American Journal of Medicine posted a study on September 18, 2013, that shows that countries with lower rates of gun ownership have fewer gun-related deaths. Japan has a gun ownership of .06 per 100, and a gun death rate of .06 per 100,000. Compare this to the U.S’s gun ownership of 88.8 per 100 citizens. For every 10 people you meet, 9 will have guns. The U.S, as a result of having the highest gun ownership rate, also has the highest death-by-firearm rate of 10.2 deaths per 100,000 residents. In 2006, the U.S had 12,791 gun-related homicides. In 2006, Japan only had two gun-related homicides.

Japan’s gun ownership is low, and their gun death rate reflects their gun ownership. The U.S’s gun ownership is high, and their gun death rate also reflects their gun ownership. This is not a coincidence, since it applies for every country and continent. Therefore gun ownership rates are connected with gun homicide rates.

Possessing a gun doubles the odds that a household member will kill themselves. The odds that a person would die by someone else’s gun are lower than the odds of a person accidentally killing him or herself with a firearm. Every year, many Americans injure themselves accidentally. These injuries are unnecessary and wouldn’t happen if we had strict rules for guns.

However, if we have such strict rules for guns, then wouldn’t that discourage citizens from having guns? Criminals would be happy to commit crimes knowing that there aren’t any armed citizens nearby.

However, if we folowed Japan's solution to gun control, then criminals wouldn’t use guns in the first place. Japan requires you to take a long series of tests that are only available once per month, including mental and physical checks, aiming practice, go to a school to learn about firearms, and then take a test at the end to verify that you understand everything about guns. If you fail to pass any of the things above, you have to try again the next month. But it doesn’t end there. The police will annually check on you to make sure you have your guns and bullets separated and locked up to prevent accidental injuries, and you’ll be forced to retake the tests that you previously took every 3 years in order to keep your gun. Since having a gun and maintaining it is extremely difficult, even the most notorious mafia groups don’t have guns in Japan. Japan’s gun laws are extremely effective, which is how they only had two gun homicides in 2006.
Guns are easy to obtain, yet they cause a lot of damage and harm. So why should they be easy to obtain? All that needs to be done is to make guns extremely difficult to get.
This would discourage criminals from possessing guns since the tests would be difficult and stressful. Of course, criminals will likely resort to knives, which would allow for police to easily handle crimes since they have the advantage of having a gun. Nothing can go wrong if we make guns hard to obtain like Japan does. They have a stable society, and the lowest gun homicide rates, so why aren’t we following Japan’s footsteps?