Gun control is an issue which, especially within the last thirty years, has both frustrated and divided America. However, today in 2016, it is an issue which has seemed to gain more publicity than it ever has before. Nowadays when Americans hear, see, or think of the words “gun control”, the term is usually intertwined with another, more intimidating term: “assault weapons”. Through a great length of the United States’ history, guns have been the instrument of several of the nation’s worst cases of violence, from assassination attempts to overthrow a sitting president to the most extreme acts of terror against innocent civilians. In the Second Amendment, which was annexed to the U.S. Constitution in 1791, it says, “A well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of the free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” However, when the Founding Fathers incorporated this right into the law of the land more than 220 years ago, none of them ever conceived of the idea of an “assault rifle” while they were living in an age where muskets and flintlock pistols were still the average citizen’s immediate choice of self-defense. It is just as unlikely that the Founding Fathers would have ever foreseen that their newborn country would eventually become the chief manufacturer of one of the most renowned assault rifles in existence. The firearm I am referring to, of course, is the AR-15.

It is by no means unobvious that the AR-15 has become the talk of the town in Washington, DC after the recent massacre in an Orlando gay nightclub that left 49 dead and more than 50 others injured on the night of June 12. This heartbreaking incident immediately grabbed the media’s attention as the deadliest mass shooting in American history. Mass shootings like these, however, have not been uncommon here in the United States. Today, American still remember the unprovoked bloodbaths at Fort Hood, Sandy Hook, Chattanooga, and San Bernardino, all of which took the lives of many fellow citizens who were unarmed and held no quarrel with the perpetrators that committed the shootings. But, to the politicians who are supposed to represent the freedoms of law-abiding citizens, the immediate concern that is brought about whenever some lunatic runs wild in a killing spree is not the person responsible for the violence or that person’s background, but the weapon.

This past Monday, June 20, the U.S. Senate wasted no time in leaping at yet another opportunity to impose stronger gun-control measures. The meeting was capitalized by Senator Chris Murphy’s 15-hour-long filibuster in which the Connecticut Democrat emphasized on pushing for stricter background checks on purchasing firearms through online and gun shows. Furthermore, these newly-proposed regulations include denying anyone on the “Terror Watch” and “No-Fly” lists from legally accessing a gun. Other Democrats in the Senate have followed suit on Murphy’s stance by making their own stands for stronger restrictions on purchasing specific types of firearms (that is to say, assault weapons). Republicans, meanwhile, have done everything in their power to counter the pro-gun control movement by submitting their own ideas for keeping firearms out of criminal hands without depriving the good-hearted citizens of their Second Amendment rights. Their voices eventually prevailed in the end, largely due to the Senate’s lack of optimism in the long-term effectiveness that the new gun laws promised to make. By the end of the day, all of the four new regulations were rejected.

For Democrats like Murphy, however, the Republicans’ victory was not the end of the prolonged battle for sufficient gun control. The vote, nevertheless, was a huge let-down for “Jackson’s Party”. The next day, President Obama responded sharply on Twitter to the Senate’s decision with this statement: “Gun violence requires more than moments of silence. It requires action. In failing that test, the Senate failed the American people.” Back in the House, the Democrats, unsettled by the foresight of defeat, chose to take matters into their own hands by commencing a sit-in on the morning of Wednesday, June 22. The protesters’ new rallying cry, #NoBillNoBreak, has symbolized their act of civil disobedience which was due to last through July 5. Until then, the Democrats have vowed to bide their time in the fervent hope that their silence will speak volumes to the rest of the nation and start making a change they believe will be for the greater good. Their resistance, however, only proved to be short-lived, as the sit-in was finally dissolved little more than 24 hours since it began. Defeat in the Senate, nevertheless, has done nothing to shatter the fighting morale within the Democratic camp for a stronger gun control policy. On the same day that Republicans and Democrats were battling each other for the final say in the Senate vote, a similar clash was taking place in the Supreme Court. The central issue at hand was a Republican-led protest to have Connecticut’s ban on semiautomatic rifles, a law passed back in 2013 in direct response to the devastating attack on Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown the previous month. Alongside Connecticut, other liberal states such as New York were targeted for debate against their own strict regulations on assault rifles. This time, the Democrats managed to hold their ground. But, in the long run, is the ground they are defending really worth fighting for? Is Obama entirely in the right for saying the Senate had 'failed the American people'? My answer, to put it very simply, is a definite ‘NO’.

While many of the Democratic states feel more protected with their gun laws still intact, their theories that violence in society can be resolved without firearms are nothing remotely close to reality. The government’s accusation of semiautomatic weapons for the mass shooting in Orlando has been yet another wrongful slap in the face to both the legal gun owners and their constitutional upholding of the Second Amendment. It was not the AR-15 that willingly turned an entire nightclub into a slaughterhouse over the course of three hours. It was the person behind the trigger, a radicalized Muslim who had sworn allegiance to ISIS and acted on behalf of the terrorist group’s jihad against Western civilization. The AR-15, of course, has not been used for every mass shooting that took place on U.S. soil since the firearm was first manufactured. Yet, as the most popular semiautomatic rifle in the world, it is no surprise that it would be put front-and-center within the liberal media’s line of fire. Nevertheless, this does not make it right to discriminate semiautomatic firearms – or any firearms, for that matter – as instruments of homicide.

The United States has experienced more than enough bloodshed in recent years that was not spilled by bullets. Timothy McVeigh, one of the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, used fertilizer for a weapon that killed 168 people. In the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing, the Tsarnaev Brothers used pressure cookers to build an IED that killed six people while injuring 264 others. And, of course, on 9/11 twelve years before that, the 19 terrorists only needed to hijack a couple planes to lay waste to the World Trade Center while inflicting nearly 3,000 deaths in the process. Clearly, with acts of violence on these types of scales, the problem isn’t “guns kill people”. If the government and the media spent more time assessing the motives of the attackers, then they would start to realize that, by pushing for bans on assault rifles, they are fighting the wrong enemy. Omar Mateen, the man responsible for the Orlando shooting, was (as previously mentioned) a confirmed supporter of ISIS and a bloodthirsty agent of radical Islamic terrorism. The Tsarnaev Brothers, too, were devout Muslims who already had a notorious history as terrorists before the bombing. The enemy is not just radical Islam, however. Timothy McVeigh was not Muslim or a sympathizer of radical Islamic groups like al-Qaeda; nor was Adam Lanza, the murderer of 27 kindergarteners at Sandy Hook. The roots of this sort of violent chaos in society that has thus far escalated to Orlando do not begin with firearms, but terrorism.

Even after the massacre in Orlando, shootings are still continuing to take place elsewhere on American soil at the careless expense of countless innocent lives. Even after Orlando, no politician has mustered the common sense to put a stop to the risk of what is actually an extremely preventable situation. Obviously, we cannot permanently subdue the tendency of human beings to kill another human being, as it has been a part of the nature of our race that goes back for centuries. It is just as impossible to effectively suppress this kind of human behavior by taking away a criminal’s right to own or carry a gun. Whether it’s an assault rifle or a regular handgun, stripping criminals of their Second Amendment right will only coerce them to find alternative means of committing mass murder – the incidences in Oklahoma City and Boston have already proved this.

So what needs to be done?

The solution is, in fact, very simple. The best start to making a difference should be in the schools and any other public facilities. Before I go any further I want you to ask yourself this: ‘Why weren’t the security guards in the Orlando nightclub armed?’ It is exactly that sort of question which almost none of our current leaders have ever spoken of publicly and, as a brutal consequence, has led to the deaths of many law-abiding civilians. Background checks, while I do agree they should still exist, should only act as the first line of defense against violent criminals. If or when that line fails, it should be the legal gun owners’ turn to protect themselves and their fellow man. Teachers and students attending public schools and college campuses to build greater futures for the next generation deserve to be protected. Groups of friends and loved ones who want to go out to a nightclub to just have fun deserve to be protected. The best and only logical way to protect them is through armed security. Terrorism, as we have already learned from ongoing wars in the Middle East, is an unpredictable opponent that cannot be destroyed simply by attacking it directly. Therefore, we cannot expect to put an end to the violence that terrorism sponsors. By providing the proper training, the proper tools, and the proper common sense, however, it is possible for us to stop these acts of violence before they go too far, ultimately saving countless numbers of lives in the process.

Before taking action, however, the initial and most important step that the U.S. government must take in order to achieve any difference in its society is to bring back its trust in the law-abiding citizens. Former president Ronald Reagan had an excellent quote for addressing gun control: “As long as there are guns, the individual that wants a gun for a crime is going to have one and going to get it. The only person who’s going to be penalized and have difficulty is the law-abiding citizen, who then cannot have it if he wants protection – the protection of a weapon in his home.” The Second Amendment is the thin red line that for the last 220 years has kept the United States out of the hands of dictators. Before the Revolution, the British monarchy imposed restrictive gun control policies on America’s forefathers. After 1791, the people’s right to keep and bear arms ensured that no oppressive regime would prop up on American soil in the same way that allowed tyrants like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Saddam Hussein, and Kim Jong-un to seize power in their respective countries. Without an armed citizenry, there is only central government. Without the Second Amendment, there can be no democracy.

If the government says it is unnecessary for citizens to own an AR-15, then it isn’t a gun problem.