In light of the eye-opening event that occurred on Skyline College campus on Wednesday September 2, 2009, a hankering for knowledge and my own curiosities lead me to question the State of California’s laws on firearm possession and assault weapons and how easily they can be accessed by the general public.

I understand that the Second Amendment states that, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” but at this point in time, I feel that our government should be instituting new laws that prohibit people who possess assault weapons and wish to sell or trade them – from doing so to the general public, or at least an amendment that will prohibit their sale online.

A more practical way to monitor weapon exchange, programs should be implemented to require people to only be able to re-sell their weapons to a licensed retail sporting goods store or shooting range licensed to sell previously owned firearms and assault weapons.

These stores can give the seller a reasonable fraction of the weapon’s retail value or a depreciated amount in respect to the worth of the item.

The reason for this change in legislature would be the alarming ease of assault weapon and artillery access of the American public.

This era of coming to rely on the World Wide Web to purchase everything from groceries to hearing aides to diamond earrings has to be stopped when the issue of guns comes into play.

For example, if you search craigslist.org’s classified ads for topics such as, “sniper rifle” or even “revolver” you can easily purchase your weapon of choice.

To top that off, it’s just as easy as purchasing a car part for your 1980 Chevrolet Chevelle or a new motherboard for a laptop- so long as you can financially back up your purchase.
In addition, there are plenty of other websites that sell guns and allow people to purchase weapons via their online website or catalog.

To see this offending practice for yourselves, just type in the topic, “revolver for sale” into google search and some of these retail websites will pop up.

I’m all for inaleinable rights, but are we really doing the right thing by making these weapons so easy to access, especially in the middle of events like this?