Just the other day as I scrolled through my Facebook feed I came across a picture that immediately caught my attention. It was a picture of a billboard that read "Cain killed Abel with a rock — It's a heart problem, not a gun problem. Jeremiah 17:9." Now, I'm not sure if this is an actual real billboard that is up somewhere, but I wish this message was displayed on billboards all across the United States.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the story of Cain and Abel, it's a story in the Bible that is actually very similar to the controversies we are seeing every day here in the U.S. Cain and Abel were brothers, and like most siblings, they had their arguments, but still cared for each other. After God accepted Abel's sacrificial offering over Cain's offering, Cain became extremely angry and jealous of his brother. Cain asked Abel to go on a walk with him, where he struck his brother to the ground with a rock and killed him. The verse Jeremiah 17:9 states, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?" If you haven't made the connection yet, people have been killing each other since the beginning of time, even before firearms existed.

Unfortunately, mass shootings have become more and more popular, and it's easy to point the blame at our right to bear arms. But it frightens me that if we lose these rights we will have nothing to protect ourselves. The way I see it, people who intend to do harm are going to do it regardless if the law says they cannot own a gun. They will either find ways to obtain firearms or they will just use another weapon of choice.

The recent mass shooting in Orlando is absolutely devastating, and it makes me sad to think that their are people in this world that have so much hatred for others. The hardest thing to accept about all of the violence is that there is and there always will be people in this world with a heart problem. It is not a gun problem, and taking away our right to keep and bear arms will only make us more defenseless.