The second amendment of the United States Constitution protects the rights for adults to bear arms. But because of the shooting in the Colorado movie theater, and the recent shooting at an elementary school in Connecticut the national opinion of gun control has changed, and more people and politicians are asking for new gun control laws, and a re-installment of a ban on semi-automatic guns.

When running for president in 2008, Barack Obama said that he would re-instate a law that banned assault weapons signed by Bill Clinton in 1994. President Obama has recently come out again for support of this law, and has put Vice President Joe Biden in charge of how the administration is going to handle gun control.

The main argument for more gun control is that when the founding fathers wrote the Constitution they couldn’t imagine the types of guns in circulation now. But what these people don’t think about is if we ban any gun it’s still going to be in circulation. If we ban any gun the only people that will have access to guns will be criminals.

It was a knee jerk reaction by the government to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and it will be another knee jerk reaction by the government to ban guns. The average American owns a gun to protect their home and their family, but criminals own a gun to cause harm. If we ban guns it will make criminals the only ones that have access to guns because they’re the only ones that are willing to go into the black market to own a gun.

The point of gun control is to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, and banning guns is not the answer. We don’t need to keep guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens; we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally unstable.

If we want real gun control we need more background checks, and better treatment for the mentally ill. The American government needs to abide by the Constitution, respect the second amendment, and let law abiding citizens have the right to own guns.