When the founding fathers sat down to write our Constitution in 1789, and declared in the Bill of Rights that every citizen has the right to bear arms, I don’t think these musket-toting Revolutionary War heroes had the semi-automatic TEC-9 killing machines of today in mind.

Gun violence in America today is a relevant issue with recent tragedies like that in Tuscon where 19 people were shot and six killed just for standing in a grocery store parking lot. In the past decades, the nation has also experienced heartbreaking school shootings when students have killed each other at Columbine and Virginia Tech. In Flint, Michigan a first grader was shot by a fellow six-year old. Sadly, legally purchased guns took all of these lives.

Some justify lax gun laws with self-defense or hunting motives, and while these are viable reasons for gun ownership, they make up the minority. A 2004 study showed that 36.5% of Americans own a gun. Certainly a third of the country’s population is not confronted by armed robbers, murderers and rapists every year, so why is it necessary for so many people to keep extremely dangerous weapons in their homes?

Having a gun handy is useful for people who readily go into the woods and have hunting permits, as well as police officers who fight crime on a daily basis. For the average citizen however, there is absolutely no reason to carry such a fatal weapon. Because guns are relatively easy to get in America today, they often fall into the hands of the wrong people.

In 1993 over 14,000 people were killed in handgun incidents in the US. This number has since declined, but we still suffer thousands more than other democratic nations like Japan and Australia who only suffered 39 and 65 such deaths respectively. Obviously, the problem is with us.

Increasing the regulation of guns and decreasing the amount in circulation would lead to much less gun violence in America. States should increase screening of psychiatric patients and ex-convicts as well as make these weapons more difficult to acquire. Leaving protection up to the police, who are meant to protect us, is the only solution to this escalating problem.