I was about ten or eleven years old when I first held a gun. I was at a summer camp that was made by the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife organization. The camp was one week long and I stayed overnight. It was made to teach you how to hunt properly, and to teach kids important life skills such as swimming, boating, and nature classes. One of the classes on my schedule was gun safety and in that class the counselors taught us how to properly handle a rifle as well as how to shoot one. They gave us a demonstration, and then selected people to come and try the rifles. When it was my turn, I walked up to the seat and sat down, putting my hand on the rifle like they showed us. I wasn’t scared, even though I was holding a deadly weapon and I was actually excited. When they told us to load the guns, we did, and then they said to fire our first bullet. When the bullet came out, the rifle bounced back on my shoulder and stung a little, but it quickly faded. I was exhilarated and wanted to continue. It was a pretty good shot if I do say so myself and I hit a couple of bull’s-eyes and had lots of fun. At the end of the week, we got to shoot a shotgun, which is different from a rifle because they are larger and have bullet cases that contain lots of little pellets that come out when the gun is shot. The instructor showed me how to hold the shotgun, and then told me to tell them when to release the clay pigeon. A clay pigeon is not an actual bird, it's a clay disk that is flung out of a machine, and you have to try and hit it. My heart was pounding, and the weight of the gun on my shoulder felt awkward, but I said that I was ready. Three… two… one… I heard the machine release the clay disk and, without thinking, I fired. I guess I hit the disk, because when I opened my eyes a second later, orange shards were flying in all different directions. They gave me the shotgun shell that came out of the gun after I pulled the trigger. It was scary at the moment, but afterwards, I was excited and felt special because I was the only one who hit it, so I was the only one with a shotgun shell. 

I went to that camp twice and had fun every time, but I never thought about how teaching young children to shoot guns could possibly be dangerous. There is nothing wrong with hunting, or even shooting guns in general, when you are doing controlled sporting activity. Being able to have a gun recreationally could lead to deaths that would be prevented in a controlled environment, but because a home isn't a necessarily controlled environment, it is very dangerous. Unfortunately, this is the sad truth, and if I could live in a world where no one died because of a gun, I would, but we don’t, so we need to change how we think about the ownership of guns and who is eligible to have them. 

The gun death rate in the US is one of the highest in the world especially compared to highly developed countries and this is most likely due to gun law varying from state to state. The Pew Research Center found that “About eight-in-ten U.S. murders in 2021 – 20,958 out of 26,031, or 81% – involved a firearm. That marked the highest percentage since at least 1968, the earliest year for which the CDC has online records”(John Gramlich 1). This means over half of the murders in America are due to gun violence alone. There have been more than 200 mass shootings this year, the definition of a mass shooting is still undecided but most people agree that if 4 or more people are killed in one incident, excluding the killer, it is a mass shooting. Not every death is due to a mass shooting, suicide by a gun takes more lives than mass shootings. The non-profit organization Everytown, found that “57% of gun deaths in the United States are by firearm suicide”(EveryStat 1).  As aforementioned in the first sentence of the paragraph, states have a varying degree of strictness to their gun laws.  Kentucky is one state that has very loose gun laws. Everytown also found that, “In an average year, 770 people die and 1,036 are wounded by guns in Kentucky”(EveryStat 1).  Kentucky has some of the least restrictive gun laws in the US and that matters because it enables people who could have a dangerous background to own a gun. The Commonwealth of Kentucky should work to restrict and reduce the access of firearms to the general public because it will lower the firearm related mortality rate and improve the mental wellbeing and safety of our community. 

Throughout America’s history there has been a connection to guns but now many people see the dangers of these firearms and are debating whether we should keep them as part of our lives. Ever since the creation of guns America has been using them to win wars and battles. Even in the US constitution it talks about guns, it seems like every part of America’s history has guns in it. In the Second Amendment of the US Constitution it says, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed”(Ron Elving 1). This sentence in the Constitution has been very controversial concerning the true meaning behind it, but what it seems to be saying is that guns are necessary to be safe and if someones’ right to have a gun is taken away it is hindering their freedom. Many people use this in support of keeping the gun laws how they are, but it could also not be directed to the general public. It could be directed to the military because they need guns to keep us safe, and if they are doing what they need to then the general public doesn’t need guns. Many politicians have been trying to ban guns for the mass population but none have stayed. For example, the Assault Weapons bans of 1994, made by Dianne Feinstine, former mayor of San Francisco, was made, “to end the sale or manufacture of 14 categories of semi-automatic assault weapons.” and she also wanted, “to go beyond the California ban by outlawing copycat versions of earlier models and high-volume detachable magazines that held more than 10 rounds”(Elving 1). They wanted this to be for all of the US but by the time that it was passed it had been changed and modified so that assault weapons were banned but the law only lasted ten years and would have to be enacted after the allotted time. Unfortunately the Congress was mostly Republican at the time and the law was not reinstated. Now people want that law and others to be enforced again and kept. 

Everyone in Kentucky is being affected by gun violence but youth and minority groups in particular are being impacted the most.  Hate crimes have been rising in the US toward minority groups and guns make it even more dangerous. Police brutality and hate crimes for no apparent reason kill hundreds of people every year. Everytown found that an overwhelming amount of black Americans die from gun violence compared to white people. Their statistic showed that, “27.3 African American people in 100,000 are killed due to gun violence in Kentucky compared to 4.5 white people”(Everystat 2). These seemingly meaningless murders toward African American people will still continue to happen unless we stop the use of guns and assault weapons because it gives people a way to easily kill others they don’t like. Another group that is being heavily affected by gun violence is the youth in our community. Many children die by firearms whether that be because of a school shootings or because of suicide. In 2020 more children died from firearm related injury than motor vehicle crashes, it is apparent that guns are killing more and more people as time goes on. Everytown also found that “In Kentucky, an average of 70 children and teens die by guns every year, of which 38% of these deaths are suicides and 51% are homicides”(Everystat 2). Many suicides happen because of parents in a household not storing their guns correctly and leaving them accessable to children. Sucide is a split second decision especially if they are using a gun, so if a firearm is lying around carelessly it is easy for a child to take their own life without thinking. While suicides don’t take as many childrens lives in Kentucky as homicide, they are still affecting children and can still just as easily kill innocent youth. 

Implicating more rigorous background checks and licenses with renewals will highly affect the amount of guns that fall into the wrong hands. Currently in Kentucky there is no law requiring all firearm purchases to have a background check on the consumer. This makes it easy for people who are prohibited by the state to acquire a gun. In Kentucky the only thing that stops someone from owning a gun is if they have been convicted of a felony, this allows people with “mental health disorders, violent misdemeanor convictions, domestic abuse-related restraining orders, or anyone with substance abuse disorders" (Pereira 1). to legally own a gun. ABC reported this in their article, “What we know about Kentucky’s gun laws after the Louisville shooting.”, talking about the effects of Kentucky’s unregulated gun ownership. Without proper background checks a firearm could be sold to someone who is not able to handle it correctly and could end up hurting someone. At gun shows and other non-licensed gun sellers there is no requirement for a background check so even a convicted felon could easily buy one because people don't care enough to look into who the buyer is, as long as they are making money. If a gun is given to someone with a history of domestic abuse it is safe to assume that they could possibly be buying a gun to hurt someone in their household, but if the gun was never sold to them they wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone. Everytown found that states that require background checks were “associated with 10 percent lower homicides rates”(Everystat 1). Showing that more rigorous background checks really do something to improve the safety of our community. There is also a law that states if a background check performed by a licensed gun dealer is not completed within three days the buyer gets to take the gun even if the background check showed that they were not allowed to own the gun. This law is called the “Default Proceed” and the FBI found that “at least 2,989 prohibited purchasers to ATF for firearm recovery operations in 2019 alone”(Gabrielle Giffords 1). Thousands of people that are not allowed to own a gun acquire one because of the Default Proceed law and this can lead to devastating effects. Because so many people are obtaining a gun even though they are prohibited it can lead to more people being injured or harmed due to guns being sold to them.

Due to gun violence in Kentucky and the constant fear for one's life, many people have developed mental health problems such as anxiety. Everyone is affected by gun violence whether they know it or not. Because of mass shootings and other gun related events, people live in fear that they might get shot just walking down the street.  This fear is unhealthy and according to Dr. Amy Banhorst, MD, a professor at the University of California Davis, who studies how we can reduce firearm related harm, “fearing gun violence may not cause more serious conditions like PTSD, but it may increase one’s risk of other mental health issues like anxiety, depression, and substance use”(Fortesa Latifi 1). This increase in mental health issues due to gun violence is not good for anyone but especially the youth in our community. Some kids fear they may get hurt going to their own school, which is supposed to be safe, causing their mental health to take a turn for the worst. If people have to live in a place that makes them scared to complete daily tasks then there's obviously something wrong. Teen Vogue interviews people about their experiences with gun violence and how they feel now. One person they interviewed was RaQuan Brown who has had second hand experiences with gun violence and how many people in his family have been killed due to it. He says, “politicians who are in charge of resources overlook neighborhoods like [mine] and the trauma perpetuates. We’re all scared and it makes it really hard to imagine we will grow old”(Latifi 1). The fear that is caused by gun violence makes people scared and the fact that political figures so easily overlook it makes people even more scared. Because gun violence is so common, people have lost the drive to stop it causing others in high crime areas to continue living in an unsafe environment. 

Banning access to firearms and assault weapons for the mass population in Kentucky will make our state safer. In the past there have been many attempts to ban or at least restrict the access to guns and assault weapons but many nationwide laws have failed to be passed because every state has its own policies. Right now Kentucky has some of the highest gun death rates out of all of the states and that is because it has very loose gun laws. People are able to easily obtain a gun, legally or not, without anything keeping them from hurting someone. A study that was completed during the Assault Weapons ban that compared the gun deaths to before and after the ban ended, found that, “a prohibition would have prevented 314 of 448 mass shooting deaths that occurred during the studied periods when the prohibition was not in effect” (Everytown 1). If the prohibition would have continued only 134 people would have died, which is miniscule compared to the 448 people who did die. Reinstating the Assault weapons ban would prevent over half of the deaths that occur from mass shootings. In the artical, “Do Tough Gun Laws Reduce Violence?”, Andrew Moral and Rosanna Smart find that while gun laws won’t fix everything, science is showing that it “is increasingly clear that [...] some restrictive gun laws seem to reduce gun violence, [while] other more permissive gun laws worsen it” (1). Having looser gun laws creates more problems than it solves and leads to people being hurt. There is no need for firearms to be something used in self-defense because you could easily use a taser or pepper spray, neither of which could kill someone. If a society is functioning properly there should be no reason to carry a gun on your person because it should be safe enough without one. The less firearms in the general public the less gun violence and the less reason to fear for your safety. 

In a perfect world no one would die at the hands of someone with a gun, but that isn’t the case and now we have to find out how to stop it. States like Kentucky that have very unrestricted gun laws need to start taking matters into their own hands because if they don’t more and more people will die. Adults, children, and anyone in between are affected by this everlasting gun violence, but if we were to limit people's access to these deadly firearms, less people would be killed or injured. This fear for your life is constant because of gun violence and it can cause people to develop serious mental health issues. As it is right now we don’t have enough affordable health care so if gun violence were to continue the mental health would only get worse and more and more people would need care, but we don’t have enough, causing a deadly downward spiral. But if we were to restrict, or ban guns and assault weapons all together people wouldn’t be as scared making them less likely to develop mental health problems. Hundreds of guns are sold to people who are not legally eligible for gun ownership, aka, convicts of a federal crime or worse. This is because most gun sales do not have background checks and if they do there is a law that says if the background check is not completed in 3 days that the gun can be sold to the person even if they are not eligible. If more background checks are put into place people will not be able to attain illegal guns and less people will be hurt. Guns hurt people all over the US no matter what laws are in place, but places with stricter gun laws have less gun related deaths, that is why the CommonWealth of Kentucky should enforce stricter gun laws for the general public because it will reduce the amount of deaths caused by firearms and improve mental health and safety in Kentucky.

Works Cited

Campbell, Josh, and Jack Hannah & Elizabeth Joseph. “Kentucky Has Some of the Least Restrictive Gun Laws in the US.” CNN, 12 Apr. 2023, www.cnn.com/2023/04/12/us/kentucky-gun-laws.

Elving, Ron. “The Nashville School Shooting Highlights the Partisan Divide Over Gun Legislation.” NPR, 1 Apr. 2023, www.npr.org/2023/04/01/1167467835/school-shooting-assault-weapons-ban-history.

Giffords, Gabrielle. “Gun Laws.” Giffords, 12 May 2023, giffords.org/lawcenter/gun-laws/.

Gramlich, John. “What the Data Says about Gun Deaths in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, 26 Apr. 2023, www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/26/what-the-data-says-about-gun-deaths-in-the-u-s/.

“Home.” Everytown, 18 May 2023, www.everytown.org/.

Latifi, Fortesa. “Living in Fear: How Gun Violence Affects Our Mental Health.” Teen Vogue, 13 Dec. 2022, www.teenvogue.com/story/how-gun-violence-affects-our-mental-health.

Pereira, Ivan. “What We Know About Kentucky’s Gun Laws After Louisville Shooting .” ABC News, 10 Apr. 2023, abcnews.go.com/US/kentuckys-gun-laws-after-louisville-shooting/story?id=98475213.

Smart, Rosanna and Andrew R. Morral. “Want Fewer Shootings? Pass Tougher Gun Laws. Our Research Shows Lax Laws Fuel Violence.” USA Today, 25 Jan. 2023, www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2023/01/24/states-strict-gun-laws-could-reduce-violence/11111232002/.