Bang! Bang! Bang! This was possibly the last sound which the twenty-eight victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary heard before they perished. The shooter, Adam Lanza, was equipped with an AR-15 assault rifle and a high capacity magazine when he decided to take the lives of twenty helpless children and six women that day. In order to prevent future attacks from happening and to protect the lives of citizens, a federal assault weapons ban must be reinstated in the United States. People who are against an assault rifle ban sometimes claim that a ban would not reduce crime. Thomas Sowell and people who agree with him believe that even if assault weapons were banned, the amount of violent gun crimes would not go down, because criminals will still find a way to acquire weapons. This is a sound claim, but, at the same time, the concept of making assault weapons harder to obtain should be agreeable to either side of the argument if the safety of American citizens was top priority. In countries where guns are not sold to private citizens, like China, the number of mass shootings is slim to none. In May this year, a man in China made an attempt at the lives of children in school, but he was only armed with a cleaver knife. The toll he took was inconsiderable, because he merely inflicted minor injuries among eight of the young students. This attack, while traumatizing, was not nearly as gruesome as it would have been if the attacker was armed with an assault rifle.When criminals do not have access to heavy artillery like assault rifles, they will still try to inflict pain upon others. However, if only armed with kitchen knives, the chances of a massacre is highly limited. .
Reinstating a federal assault weapons ban will reduce the amount of gun homicides seen each year. The United States has been ranked the number one nation in the world with the highest number of civilian-owned firearms.