What will it take for stricter gun control laws?

    Let me start this column by straight out saying I am not against the 2nd Amendment, I am not anti-gun, but I am pro-gun control.

The conversation of gun control always seems to come alive in the wake of tragedies like the recent massacre in Aurora, Colo., but it seems like nothing ever changes.

The last major gun control law to be enacted was the Brady Bill during the ‘80s, when President Ronald Regan was nearly assassinated.

Since then we have had the massacre at Columbine High School, the shooting of congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, the shooting at Fort Hood, a shooting in Binghampton, NY that left 13 dead and Virginia Tech that left 32 dead, among others.

Virginia Tech led to a small change in gun laws (Congress provided additional funds for states to research potential gun purchasers), but that obviously did not lead to stricter gun control.

Now—at the risk of sounding like a broken record—what will it take for us to learn?
According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, for every 100 people in the U.S., 88 people own a gun. Sixty percent of homicides in 2011 were by firearm.

This makes the U.S. number one in gun ownership in the entire world.

I do understand wanting to own a gun for protection and to keep power evenly spread among people (take a look at the situation in Juárez, now only the bad guys have guns and they control everything), but when one person can go online and by 6,000 rounds in one purchase, you can’t deny that there is something seriously wrong with our gun laws.

There’s nothing wrong with owning a small handgun that you can store away safely in a closet somewhere in your home, but why does anyone need to own an AR-15 or a Remington 870, which were the guns used by James Holmes? And an even better question: why can people purchase those types of guns within a span of only three months?
Why didn’t radars go off? Even if this man only had one previous run-in with the law (a speeding ticket), that just shows that anyone has the potential to become a murderous psychopath.

I know a lot of people will start throwing out that “they want to take away our guns!” bit, but that’s not the case at all. People shouldn’t have their guns taken away, but at the same time, not just anyone should be able to purchase a gun.

In fact, in a survey conducted by Republican pollster Frank Luntz and Mayor Michael Bloomberg on July 24 found that 65 percent of National Rifle Association members would back a law that would require gun owners to report a missing or stolen gun.

So, let’s use some common sense America. We are not in the 18th century anymore, and in this century you do not have to hunt to survive and you don’t have to own an assault rifle to protect yourself from the government.

Jasmine Aguilera may be reached at prospector@utep.edu.