There is nothing quite like glancing at your aunt and uncle’s local newspaper on the morning before Thanksgiving to find an article about Wisconsin’s abolishment of the minimum age for a gun license on the front page.

More specifically, it covered a six-year-old girl’s first successful deer bagging.

That certainly put a damper on my holiday spirit.

It’s difficult to say what terrifies me more; the mayor rationalizing that such an act is a good idea, or the parents of this girl jumping on the bandwagon to place a gun in her hands.

Either way, kindergarteners and even younger children now have as much right to march or crawl through the woods while as well-armed as their grandparents – with their parent’s supervision of course.

Personal politics are fought over on nearly every social media site and news medium so that they really do become exhausting to even think about anymore.

Gun control (or a lack thereof) has reached a new level of insanity that goes far deeper than politics because of its threat to the lives of each person who lives within the borders of the United States.

Laws like this should not exist in the twenty-first century, especially when considering what effects such little gun control has had on thousands of people in the recent of years.

No child should have the responsibility of handling a firearm, even when an adult is supervising their every move.

I remember a news story a few years ago where a boy around the kindergarten age accidentally shot his little sister.

There have been plenty of stories like that previously, and they certainly won’t be the last ones told.

Children are so much more likely to act impulsively.

It would seem impossible that people can continue to remain unaffected by the surplus of mass shootings across the United States.

Loosening what little control there is on firearms is an enormous step in the opposite direction lawmakers should be taking to solve the problem.

Maybe they assume every country suffers from this problem, even though Americans own nearly half of the estimated 650 million civilian owned guns worldwide (CNN Gun Statistics).

The reality is that more people have died from mass shootings in the United States within the last two months than Europe has had in the last two years.

The difference between the two is, of course, Europe’s much stricter gun policy.

Even Australia created the National Firearms Agreement in 1996, following the deadliest mass shooting in their history.

It requires anyone who possesses a gun to have a firearm license that is registered with a serial number and to obtain such a license, they must demonstrate a genuine reason for holding a firearm.

A record is kept of all those who are forbidden such a luxury.

While this action was unable to put a complete stop to such extreme violence, the number of mass shootings dropped substantially, and certainly none have occurred on the scale of what the United States has been dealing with.

Unfortunately, the United States continues to be strongly against such progressive reform.

It’s difficult to say what terrifies me more; the mayor rationalizing that such an act is a good idea, or the parents of this girl jumping on the bandwagon to place a gun in her hands.

Those in positions of power argue mass shootings are a result of mental illness, even though Europe has approximately the same percentage of mentally ill people without the occasional shooting spree.

Our problem is the lack of gun control and the endless defense of the Second Amendment.

How many people really understand how our government functions when they argue that people can’t change the constitution?

Believe it or not, people can change the Second Amendment; that’s why they call it an amendment.

Arguing that guns are needed for a person’s own protection is equally pointless.

You won’t need a gun to defend yourself if the other person doesn’t have a gun.

No other weapon is as quick and effective as one, and it is much less likely someone will decide to rob your house if they must resort to the primitive method of using a knife.

Every sensible kitchen has knives, so you would still be evenly matched even if you did find yourself in such a situation.

Anyone who finds that suggestion ridiculous should probably reevaluate their argument for keeping a gun in the house for safety.

It is also important to question why so many people weigh their own freedom as more important than the lives of thousands of others.

Especially when this ‘freedom’ is solely based on the ability to possess a firearm.

Americans love to loudly proclaim their freedom to the world but they never question how much freedom is too much.

You have freedom of speech, freedom of education, and freedom to vote, will it really cost you so much to relinquish the right to a gun?

You may not intend to use it for violence and maybe you never will, but the fact remains that someone always does.

That is not a risk any human should be willing to take.

Allowing children of any age to use a gun is not progressive.

Moving forward without stricter gun control will only lead to more mass death.

It is long past the time for reform.

Let’s end this brutal pattern once and for all.