I live in Australia where I can’t own a gun. We haven’t been able to buy guns to protect our families since the 1990’s and the Port Arthur Massacre.

Some of my friends in the USA say they need a gun to protect their family. My questions to them about the need for guns are as follows:

What if you didn’t need a gun to protect your family?

In Australia, I don’t have a gun to protect my family. We can protect ourselves through martial arts if we must, but giving guns out is just too dangerous. Guns kill people in a moment — there’s no time to rethink your decision.

We don’t want our children growing up and thinking that gun ownership is the answer to our problems.

Walking down the street to blow someone’s head off because you had a small disagreement doesn’t make sense in our way of life.

There’s protecting your family and then there are excuses for owning a gun which make zero sense. In fact, there’s no logical answer to owning a gun other than it should be a choice. I think that choice has proven to be something we can’t rely on people to make for themselves.

Do we give people more freedom while simultaneously killing them? Is this false idea of freedom more important than being safe without guns?

What if more violence and murder was not the answer?

Protecting your family shouldn’t be about violence. Thinking about safety and then in the next sentence saying “We need violence and guns” makes no sense. The answer is not safety.

The answer is:

No guns.
Treatment of mental health issues.
Better conflict resolution strategies that are taught in school.

The right to end someone’s life through a single bullet is a decision that I don’t think each of us should be given.

We all have moments of rage, depression, trauma, etc and having a gun in these moments provides a dangerous resolution, to an already confused and exhausted mind’s thoughts.

I love America and have visited there, but I just don’t feel safe. Knowing that at any moment someone could pull a gun on you because they’re having a bad day scares me.

If I have a gun and you have a gun, and we both aim it at each other, who wins? Does both of us having a gun make the situation right and fair?

What if the problem was the guns, not the people?

All of us have our issues. We all go through situations where we might have extreme thoughts and maybe even to the extent we think about harming someone so we can “protect our family.”

I see the problem as the guns and not the people.

We can treat the issues that people have, but we can’t undo the harm that firing a gun at someone does. Do we really feel safe when we carry a gun? Has it really made the communities in the USA safer? From what I’ve seen, it definitely hasn’t.

Guns cause so many problems. They rip apart families, create more hatred, take away parents and even children. Guns make us feel unsafe and they give us options that we don’t need.

Guns are an excuse that avoids the real problems of society. If we look at why people use guns, we’ll learn so much about humanity. I never want to know that if I have a bad day, a gun could be an option to resolve how I’m feeling.

I’d rather not have the choice of a gun so I can make the following choices:

- Choosing love
- Choosing to resolve the problem without violence
- Choosing to sleep on my anger
- Asking a friend/mentor how to resolve the issue without violence

“When we learn to see each other’s differences and take pride in them, we don’t turn to hatred and the idea that we must divide nations and even continents through violence”

Violence has always been with us through guns and we’ve now evolved enough as a species to live without guns.

Let’s learn to respect and love each other again.
Let’s put the guns down.
Let’s choose the freedom to resolve issues without a gun.
Let’s be free instead of feeling incarcerated through guns.

The time is now to put the guns down.