It happened again.

The United States Constitution has failed the American public, taking the lives of nine people.

We have the right to bear arms. It is our prerogative as an American to buy as many guns and rifles and assault weapons as we can. That is what our founding fathers meant when they drafted this amendment, right?

Those living in the late 1700’s had muskets. You know, the gun that you needed to reload after each shot, which takes a long enough while you rethink why you wanted to murder someone.

George Washington made this in case the government decided it wanted to become a tyranny and the citizens could fight back. This made sense — with muskets.

If all the U.S. public has now to fight to government are a helluva lot of assault rifles, we will lose. If you want to go up against our government — which has drones —  with your precious AK 47, have fun dying.

But we still need guns to protect ourselves. We need them to ensure we are safe.

How safe is it when almost half of gun-related deaths are suicides? Having a gun in the house and readily available, your chances of shooting yourself compared to those of shooting an intruder are astronomically higher.

Let’s imagine for a second that someone breaks into a responsible gun-owner’s home. One would hope that gun was kept in a safe. Are you just going to tell the burglar to wait while you get to the safe, open it, make sure the gun is loaded and use it on him?

Alright then.

The alternate situation is having a fully-loaded glock laying around — free to use whenever and on whomever. I would rather have my house broken into and some stuff stolen than the chance of accidentally being killed by whoever picks it up.

What about hunting? Surely we can still use rifles to hunt. There are specific rifles that are made for murdering animals. They are not semi-automatic and do not have the capacity for several rounds of ammunition. These do not pose a large threat to public safety.

What does pose an enormous threat to public safety are the 310 million guns currently in circulation in America. That is approximately one firearm for every man, woman and child.

This is beyond insane.

There is not a valid single reason as to why we need to many death-machines in the hands of anyone who wants one.

It is a fact proven time and time again that more guns means more deaths. The shooting at Umpqua Community College marked the 294th mass shooting. Not of the past decade. Not of the past five years. Of this year. There have been more mass shootings than days of 2015 thus far.

And the NRA wants more guns? It has been shown in Australia and the United Kingdom that banning semi-automatic weapons and recalling those on the streets reduces mass shootings, gun violence and suicides by figures up to 75 percent.

Our congress can’t even pass legislation to mandate background checks. Maybe this is because half of the Congressmen’s campaigns are funded by none other than the NRA. They are putting money to continue their misguided politics aheads of the safety of every American life.

So nothing is going to change.

We are so blinded by this out-dated amendment that would be unrecognizable to those who drafted it we refuse to see any benefits of banning assault weapons.

Assault weapons.

Not protection weapons.

Not hunting weapons.

Weapons with the sole intent of inflicting harm on others.

We don’t need those.

We will not be left unprotected if they are recalled.

Our rights as a gun-loving, violence-glorifying, murder-heavy culture won’t be infringed upon.

But, let’s be honest, I’ll be saying the exact same thing in a couple of months when we have another mass-killing spree by someone who had all-too-much ease getting their hands on a gun.

We have lost our right to bear arms.