Gun Control
Thomas J. Williams Sr.
Comp Ge 217
Rachael Stanford
March 4, 2015

The article about columbine and the 5 year old really outraged me because I believe there were signs of trouble before the shooting but I believe the administration and people around them just didn’t pay attention to the boys. Probably saying ‘boys will be boys”. It turned out to be the worst school shooting in history. The article said
“A Kentucky mother stepped outside of her home just for a few minutes, but it was long enough for her 5-year-old son to accidentally shoot and kill his 2-year-old sister with the .22-caliber rifle he got for his birthday.” (5-year-old Kentucky boy fatally shoots 2-year-old sister)
There is no good reason a young child should own a gun but the worst part is this is not the first and probably won’t be the last. There are others like this like two other incidents involving young children shooting others. In early April, 2013 a 4-year-old boy in Tennessee shot and killed a 48-year-old woman, and just days later, 6-year-old Brandon Holt was killed in New Jersey after being shot in the head by his 4-year-old playmate.
“On April 20, 1999, two teens went on a shooting spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, killing 13 people and wounding more than 20 others before turning their guns on themselves and committing suicide. The crime was the worst high school shooting in U.S. history and prompted a national debate on gun control and school safety, as well as a major investigation to determine what motivated the gunmen, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17. There was speculation that the two committed the killings because they had been bullied, were members of a group of social outcasts that was fascinated by Goth culture, or had been influenced by violent video games and music; however none of these theories was ever proven.”(Columbine High School Shooting)
I also don’t believe that video game or the music had anything to do with the violence that happened in Littleton, Colorado it was two disturbed kids that had access to weapons of mass destruction. If those boys did have access to that those maybe those people would still alive.
In the Washington state school shooting he targeted cousins and seemed like a happy kid but on twitter said he was a boy with a broken heart. If he had not had access to the guns he couldn’t have killed.
In the sandy Hook shooting Adam Lanza was diagnosed with a sensory-integration disorder when he started elementary school and was later diagnosed by a psychiatrist with Asperger syndrome. “He also had obsessive-compulsive disorder. His father suspects that Lanza might have suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia or psychopathy in addition to his other conditions. Peter Lanza said that family members might have missed signs of the onset of schizophrenia during his son's adolescence because they attributed his odd behavior and increasing isolation to Adam's Asperger syndrome. The predatory aggression demonstrated by Lanza in the shooting is generally not seen in the autistic population.” After the Sandy Hook shooting gun debates came more and stated: “The Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States, including proposals for making the background-check system universal, and for new federal and state legislation banning the sale and manufacture of certain types of semi-automatic firearms and magazines with more than ten rounds of ammunition.
Within hours of the shooting, a We the People petition was started asking the White House to "immediately address the issue of gun control through the introduction of legislation in Congress," and the gun control advocacy group the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence reported that an avalanche of donations in the hours after the shooting caused its website to crash. Five days later, President Obama announced that he would make gun control a "central issue" of his second term, and he created a gun violence task force, to be headed by Vice President Joe Biden. On January 16, 2013, Obama signed 23 executive orders and proposed 12 congressional actions regarding gun control. His proposals included universal background checks on firearms purchases, an assault weapons ban, and limiting magazine capacity to 10 cartridges.

On December 21, 2012, the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre said gun-free school zones attract killers and that another gun ban would not protect Americans. He called on Congress to appropriate funds to hire armed police officers for every American school and announced that the NRA would create the National School Shield Emergency Response Program to help. After LaPierre's press conference, the Brady Campaign asked for donations to support its gun control advocacy and asked NRA members "who believe like we do, that we are better than this" to join its campaign. On January 8, 2013, former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot and injured in a 2011 shooting in Tucson, launched the gun control group Americans for Responsible Solutions, with a specific aim of matching or exceeding the fundraising capabilities of the NRA and similar groups.

On January 16, 2013, New York became the first U.S. state to act after the shooting when it enacted the Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act. On April 4, 2013, Connecticut and Maryland both enacted new restrictions to their existing gun laws. Ten other states had passed laws that relaxed gun restrictions.

Legislation introduced in the first session of 113th Congress included the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013 (AWB 2013) and the Manchin-Toomey Amendment to expand background checks on gun purchases. Both were defeated in the Senate on April 17, 2013.

On December 15, 2014, nine of the families affected by the shooting filed a lawsuit against the manufacturers of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the school attack.” This the reason we need stricter gun control. Not to take away people right to bear arm as the second amendment said we can have but so that kids and adults don’t have access to weapons that they have no business having in the first place.

1. "5-year-old Kentucky Boy Fatally Shoots 2-year-old Sister - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/01/us/kentucky-accidential-shooting/>.
The shooting of the girl was wrong because no 5 year old should have a gun especially a .22 2. "Washington State School Shooting: 'Run, Get out of Here' - CNN.com." CNN. Cable News Network. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/24/us/washington-school-shooting/>.
The police should of prevented when they found the gun the day before. 3. "Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting>. 4. "James Eagan Holmes." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Eagan_Holmes>.
James had no business having access to any weapon with his mental condition, people should of saw the warning signs. 5. "Columbine High School Shootings." History.com. A&E Television Networks. Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://www.history.com/topics/columbine-high-school-shootings> 6. For guns=.Chastain, Russ. "Why Own a Gun (Exploring the Reasons) - Hunting." Web. 25 Feb. 2015. <http://hunting.about.com/od/guns/a/whyownagun.htm>.
Hunting or defending your home is reasons so you should have a gun but not full automatic ever. 7. "10 Big Questions in the U.S. Gun Control Debate - HowStuffWorks." HowStuffWorks. Web. 4 Mar. 2015. <http://people.howstuffworks.com/10-questions-in-gun-control-debate.htm>.

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