On Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, a tragedy struck. An incident similar to what happened many years ago in Columbine took place. Twenty-seven. people were killed and 17 of them were children. Not high school students or even middle school, but elementary students. Not that their age makes a difference, but it shows how insane some people truly are.
According to national news sources, the shooter was a 17-year-old male whose mother worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School. He had taken a semi-automatic rifle from his mother’s gun collection and made his way into the school and opened fire upon the innocent children. It was an extreme tragedy, and I can only imagine how the children, families of the victims, and the community feel, because  I have no way to empathize with them. After so many school shootings though, shouldn’t we have had better gun control laws by now, or even better security for our schools?
After every school shooting, gun control laws are always proposed to tighten down who can own dangerous weapons. Usually, as in the Columbine and Virginia Tech shootings, the government attempts to pass laws but to no avail.My thought is that if Congress does attempt to pass laws to secure gun control, it will be successful this time. Why? Before the victims were students who were nearly adults, or even already mature members of society. In this case, the victims were almost all innocent and oblivious children. Of course, what kind of government officials wouldn’t approve of banning psychotic citizens from obtaining dangerous weapons? They surely wouldn’t want to be considered “supporters” of child murderers.
Even though laws will more than likely be passed, I believe that the current laws should remain the same.  Taking away guns from everyone because of a small group of people’s mistakes is outrageous. It is the same as taking away every person’s driving privileges because one person ran someone over. The government can’t just over-generalize and punish everyone. Besides, the United States Constitution does entail the right to bear arms.
Take this into consideration: Say that owning semi-automatic rifles is banned. Is this really going to stop sociopathic murderers from obtaining the weapons? If anything, they may perform more crime just to gain possession of one. Therefore, is banning these weapons really going to change much? Honestly, if a criminal wants to secure a rifle, there is not much that can stop him.
With that being said, I believe our nation will soon be under much stricter gun laws, banning large magazines and semi-automatic weapons. Even though the reasoning behind this is plausible as pointed out, I am a firm believer this will happen. Noticeable changes, such as higher prices for items related to firearms, are already occurring and it has been such a short period of time. It makes one wonder, “Is our nation  becoming one that relies on images, not true reasoning?”