Every time there is a mass shooting like the one that happened early Friday morning in Colorado, the issue of gun control rises again. People start questioning whether this will be the shooting that changes people’s minds about gun control. The right will say that if the people in the theater had guns, the killing would have been lessoned. The left will say if the laws were stricter as to how many, and the kinds of guns you can own, this may have never happened.

Would more gun control laws lower the incidences of mass shootings? Japan has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. They also have one of the lowest gun crime rates in the world. Will the United States adopt similar laws? No. This comes down to the second amendment…the right to bear arms. Our constitution gives us the right to bear arms. Some interpret the amendment to mean the people have a right to bear arms for a militia. Others think it means the right to bear arms period. The debate will never be over.

I think the debate should be not whether you have the right to bear arms but the right to bear enough arms to start your own war. Is it really necessary to have assault rifles, semi-automatic weapons, etc.? I don’t think so. I think we need stricter, reasonable gun control. No matter what you say about the second amendment, you don’t need these types of guns.

The right will argue “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” While that’s technically true, if the person didn’t have the gun in the first place, they wouldn’t have been able to kill people. Usually the person who does these kinds of shootings ends up having some kind of mental illness. If they had not had access to guns, would the killings have ever taken place? Hard to say.

The debate will go on and on. What do I think? I think the United States needs to implement much stricter gun laws. The amount and the type of guns you can “bear” need to be regulated. Period.