In the past few months, gun control has been made the center of media attention. While many people continue to deny that such reform is needed, I strongly disagree with them. Our current laws need to be reformed.

Currently, there is no federal law requiring a background check at private gun sales. According to Time magazine, an estimated 40 percent of gun transactions are done privately. This means that any person of any mental health and/or criminal record can acquire a firearm. By requiring background checks for private venders, criminals can be kept from acquiring those weapons.

Another flaw in the current system is that aside from three states, there is no limit to the amount of guns someone can buy in a specific time period. The only restriction is that a licensed seller must report the buyer to the federal government if they buy more than one handgun from the same person in a five business-day period. Once again this excludes private venders. I think that the government should require people to wait 30 days between each gun transaction and require venders to report those who break the law. This could help prevent future mass shootings by keeping a person from being able to quickly stock up on weapons.

Another regulation that should be put into place is the banning of certain semi-automatic rifles and the limiting of the amount of rounds a magazine can hold. The government could buy back the semi-automatic rifles from current owners to help people comply.

One reason the amount of rounds per magazine should be banned is that these are prevalent in mass shootings. According to politico.com, in every mass shooting between 1984 and 2011, the gunman used a clip that carried more than 10 bullets. If these gunmen had a clip that had only 10 bullets then they would have had to spend more time reloading, which would have given the police more of a chance to stop shooters.

For example, at the Tuscan shooting in Arizona the gunman was tackled and stopped only because there was a break in the fire when he reloaded his gun.

Assault weapons should also be outlawed because these weapons are actively involved in mass shootings. Curbing these types of guns, will lower the amount of attacks.

Furthermore, Australia has proven that a ban like this is possible. They demonstrated this in 1996 when they illegalized assault rifles. Since then, researchers in British Journal of Medicine have shown that Australia was followed by more than a decade of mass-free shootings, and the amount of firearm deaths declined.

However, some people say the criminals would not be disarmed with restrictions. Yet, the Newton, Conn. shooter received his rifle from his mother. If she did not have her rifle, neither would he. Another example is the Aurora shooter, who also bought his gun legally.

Still, many people vehemently disagree with imposing these weapon restrictions on Americans. Many people refer to the Second Amendment and say they can own any gun they want. Yet, that is not true. It says people must have access to a gun but not every gun. It does not say that the government cannot regulate guns or gun use. These same people go on to say that the Second Amendment was to stop a tyrant from taking over. They incorrectly say that restrictions are the start to losing the right to own a gun.

Banning one type of gun is not banning all firearms and the government will ensure this will not happen due to checks and balances. Our congressmen and women would not ban all guns because some of them are against that very idea. Furthermore, if banning one gun led to the loss of all firearms than the first semi-automatic ban we had, should have resulted in us having no firearms today.

Some people say that allowing more weapons are beneficial, but according to the Harvard Injury Control Research Center, more guns are negligible because only a small percent of the population will carry a gun and generally this group of people are old, rural, white males who are not the most susceptible to crimes.

Another argument that many people say is that guns are inanimate objects, they do not kill, the people do. However, there is statistical evidence, according to factcheck.org, that more guns relate to more gun related homicides. Some people say though, that if someone is intent on killing someone, the weapon of choice does not matter. However, on the same day as the Newton massacre, another attack occurred at an elementary school in China where 22 kids and one adult were injured by a knife, however, there were no fatalities. The reason being the weapon of choice.

In other countries, they have stricter gun laws and all of them have seen a decrease in gun-related homicides. In Japan, only 11 people died in 2008 from firearms, compared with nearly 12,000 in the U.S. according to the nytimes.com. From these statistics one can easily infer that more gun laws results in less deaths.

The government needs to take a hint from the Aurora and Newton incidents, and statistics and add more gun regulation to our current system.