DEAR EDITOR: 

Due to recent school shootings, millions of people are now convinced that assault rifles should be illegal.

The media has such a large impact on the way people see this issue. Every time I hear gun talk on television it is always one-sided and tries to put guns down. People feel civilians should not have these so called “dangerous” weapons.

Since the December shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school, people have been raging on and on about guns and how they are ruining our society when in fact the amount of homicides has been on a decline since the 1980’s.

The media makes it seem like gun violence has never been higher. The media needs to report on stories of guns saving people’s lives instead of harming people, so everyone would have both sides of the story.

In a study published by the New York Times, the seven nations with the most guns per capita had 1.2 murders annually for every 100,000 people. The rate in the nine nations with the fewest guns was 4.4 for every 100,000 people. This study shows that when people are more heavily armed, less people die.

Like Larry the Cable Guy said in one of his jokes, “if guns kill people I can blame misspelled words on my pencil”. This is exactly what is going on right now.

People are blaming the tools used, not the operator using them, when in fact these tools cannot operate without a user.

Many people have done their own personal studies on how these guns are to blame. A man set one of his assault rifles in a wheelchair, opened his door and set a loaded magazine next to it.

All day long people showed up to the house, looked in the door and not one person was actually shot by that gun. It must be truly shocking to people who find out that no one was shot.

When I see videos of incidents like the recent school shootings, I don’t see dangerous weapons, I see dangerous people. It is not the guns fault. It is the irresponsible criminals behind the guns that are to blame. Making these guns illegal will have little impact on gun crime, this is due to the fact that criminals don’t follow the laws in the first place.

This new law will not suddenly make them see the light and come to realize they are wronging society.

These criminals are going to continue to use illegal guns for their crimes, it is pointless to take guns out of law abiding citizen’s hands and leave them defenseless to the criminals, who do not follow the laws!

— John Soares