With the most recent school shooting in America being Nov. 14 at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, we need to take action against guns now. A 15-year-old should not be able to get a weapon and take the lives of their peers.

California is the state with the most strict gun laws, but clearly, we are not seeing much of a change based on these actions and must be more drastic in order to prevent more tragedies like this from happening.

According to The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department, Saugus was placed on lockdown along with neighboring elementary schools in order to prevent the shooter from causing more casualties, but this is not enough of a reaction to a shooting.

The second amendment was written when weapons took minutes to reload and defending military-grade weapons in civilian hands by using this argument is incredibly dangerous and an insult to American rights.

Studies have been done over the years to compare America to other “high-income” countries like Australia, Austria, Canada and Belgium and found that “the United States has an enormous firearm problem compared with other high-income countries, with higher rates of homicide and firearm-related suicide,” according to The American Journal of Medicine.

Other countries, like Australia, have a full ban on guns and this action was taken after one shooting that left 35 dead in 1996.

Australia took action after one tragedy, but America has not when we have had over 20 school shootings so far this year.

The way Americans can prevent more deaths is by taking a note out of another country’s book and ban semi-automatic and other military-style weapons across the country. We must prohibit these guns from being imported and filter them out of the hands of civilians through annual government buy-backs and no legal repercussions.

This will not breach our second amendment rights, but rather keep it true to what our founding fathers were thinking back when they wrote the constitution.