On December 14^th, 2012, Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School, armed with a Bushmaster XM15-E2S semi-automatic rifle and several magazines for his weapon. Lanza was quick in killing the school’s Principal and psychologist before moving to a first grade classroom and killing 15 children, leaving a sole six-year old survivor. Upon re-uniting with her family, the girl reported, “Mommy, I’m okay, but all my friends are dead.”

The shooting at Sandy Hook was the second-deadliest shooting by a single person in U.S. history, and begged reconsideration of our nation’s gun laws. How can a single man kill so many in such a short amount of time? Lanza answered that question, with assault weaponry.

The U.S. Justice Department defined assault weapons as “semiautomatic firearms with a large magazine of ammunition that were designed and configured for rapid fire and combat use” in the 1994 Federal ban on assault weapons. Based on this interpretation, it is clear in my mind that assault weapons have no place in our public, serving only as tools of destruction for dangerous men.

How can anyone defend the continued use of these guns? Designed to kill the most people possible in the least amount of time, assault weapons are simply unnecessary for the self-defense. Why can a handgun not suffice as defense from home invaders? Furthermore, most of those who oppose a ban on assault weapons argue that they are required for defense from the government, which is an extremely silly argument to me. How often have the citizens had reasons to fear the government in our nation’s history? And, perhaps more importantly, how could an assault weapon protect you from the world’s most powerful military? If the United States government wants you gone, it will happen, assault weapon or not.

Others argue that a ban on assault weapons would impose on our second amendment right to bear arms, but this claim makes no sense to me. Our founders put in place a process to amend our constitution, so that it can be improved and modernized as time goes on. While a healthy fear of government and a well-stocked militia may have been important in the 1700s, the year is 2014, and it is time that changing times are reflected in our Constitution.

What I am not saying is that we ought to abolish the second amendment right to bear arms. I truly do believe that guns have saved lives, and can be necessary for protection from home invaders. The nation of Switzerland, where all men between 20 and 30 years of age are required to own weapons, is a prime example of how gun ownership is strongly associated with lower rates of violence. Switzerland’s annual rate of gun-related homicide was .52 per 100,000 people, one of the lowest in the world. However, most gun-owners in Switzerland own handguns rather than assault weapons, and ammunition is not available for these men. Overall, particularly with our nation’s flawed system of background checks, I would feel much more comfortable knowing that assault weapons were not readily available to disturbed men who happen to visit local gun shows (where there is often a total lack of screening).

I have heard the slogan many times that, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” I wholeheartedly agree with that, but I also know that it is impossible to keep track of every mentally unbalanced person in our nation of 300,000,000 people. Rather than try and account for every Adam Lanza out there, why not control the amount of damage they can do? In addition, supporters of assault weaponry often remind me of the high percentage of gun-related violence with illegally bought guns. And yet, according to a 2005 estimate of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), 67% of traced crime guns were first legally purchased in the state of Connecticut. Connecticut is far from the exception, however. In fact, our home state of Pennsylvania reports 78% of our gun crime first legally purchased in state according to the ATF.

Lastly, to address critics who ask why gun ownership in the United States has increased while gun murders has decreased, I would like to point to the fact that the percentage of American households with a gun has been steadily declining, with a high of 54% in 1977 to 33% in 2009 according to a study conducted by the Pew research center in 2009.  However, the average number of guns per owner has increased, from 4.1 in 1994 to 6.9 in 2004 according to a study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center in 2008. Perhaps the drop in households has been the true contributor to the decline in gun homicide. The rise in guns per owner may also be evident of gun owners worrying about soon-to-come tighter restrictions on gun sales, and perhaps they should be. When 82% of Americans support limiting the sales of assault weapons (according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll conducted in 2008), perhaps gun owners have reason to worry.

In 2004, Governor Romney of Massachusetts supported an extension of the 2004 ban on assault weapons, and signed into effect a law banning these weapons in his state as replacement. In a press conference at the time, Romney declared, “These weapons are not made for recreation or self-defense. They are instruments of destruction with the sole purpose of hunting down and killing people.” Regardless of his flip-flopping during the 2012 presidential race, Romney appeared to have the right idea in Massachusetts, successfully giving the state the lowest firearm fatality rate in the nation. This headlines several clear indicators that reducing the availability of assault weaponry will lead to a safer public.

Unlike most legislation, an assault weapons ban has actually been in place before, with fairly promising results. According to Huffington Post writer John Rosenthal, there was a 66% reduction in assault weapons being linked to crimes between 1994 and 2004, the years when the ban was active. Clearly Congress was not sold on these effects, as they failed to extend the ban, but how often has our legislative assembly been successful in coming together and passing legislation?  The problem is that crimes linked to assault weapons are not very numerous statistically; making drops in this crime hard to measure. Although few, I would argue that the shootings that occur with assault weapons, including those of Sandy Hook and Aurora, Colorado (the shooting during The Dark Knight Rises in 2012) strike our citizens’ feeling of safety. My mom nearly kept me from watching a quality Batman film after the Colorado shooting! Although a silly example, perhaps it truly illustrates the effects of assault weapons in our society: they serve to create fear for one’s own safety. The time to end this fear is now. Loosen assault weaponry’s grip on our public, and give America a safer, happier future.