I come from Jacksonville, Fla, a place where people will break into your car in the middle of the day, I have seen things like this firsthand. I have seen a man tried to pick the lock off my front door.

Late one night, a noise came from our front door. Knowing my dad wasn’t off of work yet, my mom peeked around the corner to see a strange man trying to pick the lock. In just a bath towel, she came fully around the corner holding my dad’s Glock 45.

I could see the dread on the man’s face the moment he saw my mom with her gun. He made a run for it. I was proud of my mom and felt safe knowing that my parents could defend us.

People think rifles are involved in most violent crimes and that rifles are a huge problem. However, according to the FBI database, the reality is, most people in shootings are killed by pistols that are easy to carry and conceal.

The FBI database shows that fewer than 500 people were killed by a rifle in 2019. Out of 331.9 million people in the whole country.

According to the FBI Crime Database, you have a higher chance of being beaten to death by someone’s fist and feet than you are being killed by a rifle. Roughly 178,965 people died from being punched and kicked.

Guns are more important to society than people think. Dangerous cities exist and people need to protect themselves.

Nine times out of ten, criminals don’t get their weapons legally. There will always be ways to get guns, legal or not.

Now you have a bunch of law-abiding citizens who are unarmed and unprotected. It is like if there was a herd of sheep (unarmed citizens) with sheepdogs (armed citizens) mixed in with the wolves (criminals) just waiting nearby for those sheepdogs to leave.

It’s better to be a sheepdog than a sheep. Because once those dogs are gone, the wolves move in and hurt the whole herd.

People need to be able to defend themselves. Home and family defense is incredibly important. It’s always good for people to at least know the basics. It’s better to know a little than be completely defenseless because you can’t always rely on the police.

It’s a scary reality, but unfortunately, it’s the world we live in. Humans are innately selfish and will always be willing to steal, and harm. There will always be people willing to ruin someone else’s life for money, even if that means hurting or killing someone. The important thing is to protect yourself and your family.

That being said, living in fear of guns only harms you. While you are entitled to your own opinion, gun control will rarely prevent gun violence and criminal activity in the future.

It’s not worth being scared of the gun, it makes more sense to be scared of the person behind it.