I would also suggest raising the age of being able to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, this would ensure that a resonsible adult, not a emotionally unstable teen, would own the weapon. (By responsible adult I mean an adult capable of making life changing decisions for him/herself)

I agree that stricter background checks should be administered, as well as the company of some form of I.D. should be present during the purchasing of a firearm. I believe that the enhancement of these laws would greatly decrease the number of criminals receiving guns.

A young boy is picked on all year by a bully (a boy who has failed the third grade twice and lashes out on the other boy to feel superior). At the end of the year the boy finally decides it is time to give the bully what he's had coming all year. He goes into the storage cabinet where he knows his father puts his hunting pistol and places it in his backpack like freshly printed homework assignment. "Never touch my gun!" Memories of the conversation he and his father had about the weapon pop into his mind, but he discards them as he remembers all of the torture the bully has put him through. The next day at recess the boy comes up to the bully with the look of revenge on his face. As he pulls the gun out of his backpack, the bully notices the gun and begins toward the entrance of the school. The boy fires the weapon wildly, three shots were fired; one hit the bully in the neck, seriously wounds him, another hits the trunk of a tree, and the last hits an unsuspecting girl in the face and kills her. The boy was only trying to defend himself.

I lost my uncle due to gun violence, therefore gun control is a subject that I adress with the utmost importance. It is established that many use guns in self-defense, and the image of the weak, physically disabled citizen being tormented by the violent, unforgiving criminal comes to mind. But what has yet to be mentioned is the look on a mother's face when she has to bury her child, the feeling in the hearts of the brothers and sisters that realize that their lifelong companions will no longer be there to experience life with. We have the right to bear arms, this right was given to us with the manufacturing of the Constitution, but on must take into consideration all of these things before choosing a gun to kill another.