I believe in the United States Constitution. It has worked for more than 200 years, however, I also believe in gun control and common sense.

It is hard to read the news and see a three-year-old child find his mother’s gun in her glove box and shoot himself in the head. This should not be happening. The public is getting a hold of guns too easily and the government needs to review its legislature on the possession of firearms immediately.

To clarify, this is about gun control; laws and policies that regulate the manufacture, sale, transfer, possession or modification of firearms. This does not mean there should be no guns. There should be no humans killing other humans because they have easy access to a firearm and they do not know how to properly use it.

There have been 12 mass shootings – where 12 or more people have died – in the United States since 1949, half of them happening within the past six years, reported by TIME Magazine in September 2013.

This trend is not and never will be beneficial to the U.S. Why is it so simple to possess a firearm? Who should be allowed to carry one? Shouldn’t a background check take longer than two days? The answer is yes. Too often, firearms end up in the hands of people who are not fit to take on that responsibility and often times, this responsibility leads to unfortunate accidents.

As reported last week by Xpress, a 26-year-old SF State student was shot to death in the South of Market neighborhood after he attempted to enter the wrong floor apartment. The man who lived in the apartment had no way of knowing that the man he thought was attempting to break into his home was an innocent young man who just had a little too much to drink.

If this man did not own a gun, purchased legally or illegally, this accident could have been prevented.

Gun supporters try to say that taking away the public’s right to bear arms will create a tyranny or let a dictator, like Adolf Hitler, rule the society as a totalitarian. Again, gun control; not gun extinction. Everyone has the right to protect themselves, but when 67 percent of gun owners claim to own a gun for protection against crime, it seems that society has a paranoia to be randomly attacked.

Here’s some statistics for you. There were a reported 307 million people living in the United States as of 2009. According to firearm manufacturers, there are 300 million firearms owned by civilians, 100 million of those being handguns.

There were 16,000 murders in 2008, 67 percent of those were deaths by firearms.

Now you cannot sit there and say “well people buy them illegally.” That’s not what we are fighting for. We cannot control the black market and illegal trade, but we can control how easy it is to purchase a firearm and ammunition. It must be regulated in order for the country to feel safe.