In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore asked why it was only Americans who continuously made such poor decisions regarding firearms and gun control. Americans have the "right to bear arms," according to the Bill of Rights. The main reason people purchase and keep guns is for "protection." Though, what are we protecting ourselves from? Other people with guns?
I do not believe that a gun is a good source of protection. If we never had the right to own guns in the first place, not unlike Japan, then maybe we wouldn't feel it necessary to possess a gun to protect ourselves. Japan's police officers are armed, though they believe that the gun is the absolute last resort. These police officers are trained in different martial arts for self defense instead of just gun training. They have nearly no need for a gun because almost nobody else in Japan owns a gun. Police officers would not have to open fire at somebody because that somebody likely does not have a gun themselves. Unarmed civilians are a lot less harmful to the public than civilians with guns. In the end, using guns for protection appears to be a vicious circle. We arm ourselves against the armed, hoping to fight fire with fire.
Now, it is said that guns don't kill people, but people do. For the most part, this is true. If people didn't have such easy access to guns, maybe they would just find an alternative way to murder. As for the case in Flint, Michigan, the child did not understand the severity of the gun that he used to kill an innocent girl. If that gun had not been present, that little girl could still be alive. The boy did not kill her. He had little to no understanding of the importance of life and death, there is no way he understood the permanence of what he did. The gun he had access to killed her. Guns being so easily accessible is not only a concern for the young. According to the article "A Land Without Guns," in 2008, 587 people in the United States were killed by a gun. On accident. That kind of sounds like a gun did kill somebody without a person doing it intentionally.
Unfortunately, it would be extremely difficult to change the United States' gun policy for the better. I hope one day we could live in an essentially gun-free environment, mainly because not much good has come from the violent ways of guns.
