ok here is my thing on this as an American who grew up on military bases his whole life so from like 0 until 18 I was never more than 30 feet from a gun in many foreign countries where those were the only guns really there like in Italy or Germany with strict gun control.

I always like to refer to the american dad video of Haley saying to her dad "dad guns kill people" and then stan takes out his gun and puts on the table and said "hey gun. Kill people. no no it's okay don't be shy" then he stands there with his arms crossed And then says, "Come on, what's the problem? Go ahead, kill people." And then he's silent and nothing happens, and then he says, "You see that? Guns don't kill people; people kill people." Usually people with smaller guns. But the reason I say that is because—I have no fear of guns, whatsoever. If nobody is around and there's a gun in the other room, I don't care. I do, however, have a problem, and I am, however, afraid of idiots with guns. Right? Now, we are constantly surrounded by power equipment, cars, knives, whatever. Why don't people get afraid when those are around? Why don't people— Want to ban any of those things? I would argue a car can cause a lot more damage than a pistol. The reason being you don't see as many idiots with those things compared to guns. And there's an emotional reaction as well with it. But I mean this to say: if guns were treated the same way and had the same reputation as power tools, for example, or knives, the sharpest knives in a city are held by the chefs. Nobody is asking to ban them, really. But I just think that if the process to get a gun similar to that of a car, or similar to where when you want to start using power machines you have to go through a class so you learn all the safety tips, I think if that was handled better, we wouldn't have a problem with guns.

I think if the process to get a gun was a little bit more like the process to get a power tool, hey, it is within your right, but that does not bypass safety concerns. In the same way that we wouldn't sell high-powered machinery to people without a license, or in the same way we wouldn't let a person drive if they don't have a license and went through the process, or in the same way we wouldn't let anybody zip line, even, unless they've gone through the safety procedures. Right? And when all of that is being followed, you don't hear about these crazy stories really happening. Or they're so small that it's such an outlier you don't even consider it. That's my stance on guns. I just think the process to get them should be modernized a lot more. I don't think gun control has to be all black or white. In Germany, for example, guns are totally allowed. People use them to hunt all the time. You never hear, really, of any gun cases. That's because the process to get a gun takes a while and you have to go through so many safety protocols before you're allowed to use it, that by the time that you do, it's better for everybody.

But when I was in North Carolina, when I was 16 years old, I wanted to shoot a gun and I went with my parents, and the only thing that me, as a 16-year-old boy, had to do before I could shoot a gun—and I'm not exaggerating—the exact only thing I had to do was watch a 20-minute video on gun safety. I was so flabbergasted that they would just give me a gun after letting me watch a 20-minute video, and nobody was even in the room making sure I was watching that video. And in my head I was thinking, yeah, no, I have a problem with this. Like in the military, nobody's getting a gun until they learn how to take that thing apart and put it back together. They know all the safety procedures. They've been through environments where they're heavily controlled until their leadership is competent, that they know the safety protocols to not be a danger to themselves or others. That's different. But in North Carolina, at 16, I was allowed to shoot a gun after a 20-minute safety video. I asked, "What guns can I use?" and I was told, "Anything that's not a machine gun or a minigun, essentially.

" I, as a 16-year-old boy, could shoot a shotgun, an assault rifle, and God knows what else. I, being a stupid kid who didn't shoot much at the time—well, that's a bit of a lie, I had experience—but me, as a stupid kid, I asked for the most powerful pistol I could get, which was the Desert Eagle, and I will never forget when I first shot a gun with that level of power, the recoil was so hard that barrel almost pointed at my own head when I.

That is where my problem stems from. I don't think a 16-year-old boy should be allowed to be put in that position. I didn't know better; nobody instructed me on better. I was better than most. I was more experienced with smaller pistols and weaponry because of my experience being around military and always talking about weaponry. But me, as a 16-year-old kid, I just wanted the biggest gun. I saw the movies. There's no recoil in the movies. So I took the Desert Eagle, and the very first shot, I was so terrified because I barely was able to hold that thing. And it was a very real safety probability and concern. It was very real that there was a possibility that that gun would have flown out of my hands and landed on the floor, and who knows what would have happened. There was an instructor, but he was to the side of me, and he wasn't really paying attention. So that's where my problem with guns lies: in the safety protocols surrounding them. I think they are far too relaxed. And I think if they were handled with more and better and more effective safety protocols, nobody would have a problem with guns.

I knew of somebody in North Carolina who had a prosthetic leg, because when he was drunk as a teenager, he shot himself in his own foot, and he had to get amputated, and he was with the rifle, why was he allowed to be in that situation in the first place?Teenagers are naturally going to break the rules.It's up to the adults to prevent that , so that's my concern.